Best free and safe email provider to use?

[ydaf]

What is the best free email service available out there? Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail or any other? I've had a hotmail account for ages which has never given me problems but I don't like that it doesn't have IMAP which makes it a pain to synchronize. I've heard bad things about gmail in terms of privacy and security (how they scan your emails and can keep your personal info). I don't want to give out a phone number or address in an email only for that to be scanned or manipulated etc...I haven't heard too much about Yahoo or any others that could be out there.

What do you guys use and what would you recommend? Ideally I would like to it be free with IMAP if possible. Thanks.

 

[thegoldenmackid]

I use GMail through Apple Mail.

 

[MacMini2009]

I use Yahoo.

 

[jackiecanev2]

Wirelessly posted (BB 8900: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

I don't think there's imap with yahoo, but you do get push iPhone support. Gmail offers imap and works well but yes on the scanning issue.

 

[wwwhatsup]

Gmail.

 

[macjram]

Gmail, I hate Yahoo ads -_-

 

[Schtumple]

I use GMail through Apple Mail.

Same here, such a good combo.

 

[yoyo5280]

Gmail + IMAP apple mail foshizzy

 

[GeekGirl*]

GMX best i have used yet.

 

[Ian1982]

Gmail

Gmail is by far the best in my opinion... I moved to it when I got a Blackberry, as it offers IMAP and POP support, keeping my phone and my Apple Mail happy!

It also has a huge storage limit

 

[angemon89]

Gmail for the free IMAP, yezzzirr.

 

[michael.lauden]

Gmail is win.

i had Yahoo forever.. until i started actually USING my email. it started with school, then craigslist, then eBay. mix that with keeping in touch with family, booking shows + promoting and toss in email texting (i.e @text.att.net) all your friends, with it wired to your MySpace, Twitter, AND Facebook... things get a little out of control without using a client.

Enter Apple's Mail client.

applying rules and tossing emails into smart folders is truly a life saver.

if there are texts they go in the text folder..

forgot my password? signed up for a new site? they go in the Memberships folder

ordered something online? they move themselves to the Orders folder

etc.. i have 10 smart folders and a bajillion rules to keep things on top of each other


the only downside is... using yahoo, i didn't pay for plus so MacFreePops came into play - unfortunately you can't fool an smtp server.


since then, most of my contacts and emails have moved over to gmail (preferred smtp client = gmail, that way, emails were sent from gmail - thus transferring them over).



ps sorry i got carried away. i should have just said gmail rules

 

[lamadude]

I use Gmail through the gmail website, which I prefer over any mail application.

 

[MacHappytjg]

Isp email?, mine works with mail i just don't use it lol. Otherwise Gmail.

 

[rhett7660]

Gmail for the free IMAP, yezzzirr.

Same here. Both me and the wife use it.