On 17 Jul 2000, 14:55, Greg Froese wrote:
> Let me start off with saying this is a great list. Before I found this
> list I would scour the net for free pop3 accounts and that is brutal
> self inflicted punishment. To have a list like this is an excellent
> resource. Keep up the great work.
>
> now for my curiousness (is that a word?)
>
> I have a number of Pop accounts at various places, for various reasons,
> but some people on this list seem to have mail boxes everywhere.
>
> I'm just curious for what you use them all for. I've got about 7 or 8
> and that keeps me busy enough.
First of all, understand that for many of us, collecting free remote
pop3 service accounts is like a hobby. It is just fun to us. It
certainly is to me. :-)
As to how we use them, that may differ from one member to another. I
know for myself, if the POP3 service is decent, I want it for
subscribing to mailing lists. I subscribe to well over a 100 mailing
lists. I do not want all those lists crashing into my main ISP account
each day. So I parse them out to my many free pop3 services. By
spreading out my subscriptions, I don't unduly burden any one service.
I only have the most important lists come into my ISP account and the
rest go into my free accounts. For those going into my free accounts,
I don't feel any rush or priority to download them each and every day.
Certainly not to the extent that I download my mail from my ISP
account. I can manage both my time and my e-mail.
This is all a form of e-mail management to me. I have these accounts
arranged in groups, where I download a group at a time. If I have the
time I download more groups of accounts.
Besides using the free accounts as a tool to manage your e-mail and
particularly your lists' mail, you can use it as a precautionary
account. Let's say you go to some site and they are offering a cool,
free t-shirt. You want to sign up for it, but you would rather not
give them your ISP account, less you be put on the spam lists. So
instead you give them one of your free pop3 accounts. If ever a free
account becomes inundated with spam, you can abandon it easy enough.
Sometimes we like to use our free accounts on our web spaces as a
contact address. You can signup for a free account with a special
username that identifies you with your web site. Listowners do this.
For example, if you started a free mailing list at eGroups.com called
"Widgets-L" and then made a web site at Geocities, called the "Widgets-
L mailing list", then you could get a free pop3 account at mailandnews
with the widgets-l username, ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and then use
that as your contact and administration address for your list and web
site.
Speaking of mailing lists, if you wished to distribute a small mailing
list, manually, using your e-mail client, some of these free remote
services would prove a better alternative to your ISP account. Your
ISP may get nervous if you send out a couple of hundred copies of a
single message, thinking you might be spamming from your ISP account.
Now we do not encourage deception on our list, and these remote pop3
accounts are not truly anonymous e-mail accounts, but sometimes you
don't want to be obvious who you are. You may wish to "pretend" to be
someone else, so long as you are not trying to defraud or harm anyone.
With a chosen username from a free pop3 service, you can configure you
e-mail client with any name.
So there you have it, Greg. There are many uses for extra pop3
accounts. You don't have to be a glutton for them like myself, but
some extra e-mail accounts can serve you in many ways.
Alan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
