So I have been with Earthlink a looooong time, and the level of spam is incredible. Though about changing my email address, and started looking up providers.

Began reading how gmail scans ALL your emails to target you for advertising, yada, yada. Found there are more secure outfits that value privacy. Some are in foreign countries like Germany, Switzerland, and so on, where things are different.

Leaders seem to be Hushmail, FastMail, ProtonMail, Startmail, and a couple others.

Anyone have strong opinions about it?

If this is for business, why not work with a company that'll host an exchange server for you?

tomciara,

Is this a personal or business account? Is there any advantage for you to keep the @earthlink address? (easily maintain contact with friends, customers, vendors, software & equipment registrations, etc.)

We have a domain name for the business and I have a personal domain name. This keeps things portable (I can use a hosting company of my choice) and I always feel that a @gmail, @earthlink, etc. email address is not as classy as a "@mybusiness" address. I also have complete control of a spam filter. If "OZ", "Opra", or "Viagra Cheap" sends me an email ... well ... good luck to them. ".ru" domains are wasting their bandwidth and many of the spammers are using the same broadcasting program that formats the messages in a way that my filter can recognize (with a few false positives). I can also enlist a 3rd party filter as an add-on service.

If you publish an email address for a business on the web, you could use an "info@", or similar, address for people to use when making the initial contact. Of course "info@" will attract spambots, but you would reply from a more private address that will remain relatively clean. Personally, relatively little spam leaks through my filter and I can't justify the time required to manage this approach. Another scheme is to use a "contact" form on the company website. A properly built form will frustrate most of the spambots. Just about any hosting service supports "alias" accounts. Email to the initial contact address will automatically be routed to another address. If "info@" becomes polluted, you can shut down "info@" and start using "info1@" with the same alias.

No scheme will be perfect because the spammers are highly motivated. Regardless of how careful you are, a Trojan installed on someone's computer can harvest all of the private contacts on that computer and sell these addresses to spammers.

Hi,

I been with Mindspring (now part of Earthlink) since the "dawn of time".

I get very little spam.

Do you have Earthlink's spam filter turned on?

Frederick

Google apps. Your domain. Better than hosted exchange email.

This.

Office 365 + Office Apps... its a no brainier if you need office licences

I do this too

I love Google Apps.

Agreed. Its what I use as well, but OP had worries about Google.

I see, appreciating all the comments.

In my limited reading, these sites give security to your emails. Sounds as though Google routinely scans your email folders, looking for ways to target you with pop up ads and emails. So their free service gets them ad money at the expense of our privacy.

On one hand, my emails don't have anything subversive in them that would not stand up to scrutiny.

On the other hand, if you are over 40, or even 30, you have seen the shift and a dumbing down of the public when it comes to privacy. Used to be that your birthdate and social security number were incredibly protected, you just did not give that kind of stuff out to a stranger. Maybe to the bank when opening an account of applying for a loan, but now?

Now your birthdate is shown to the world on Facebook. Your ssn goes out on websites, your charge card info, they are no longer private and protected. Your iDevices and Alexa are eavesdropping on you 24/7. Meanwhile, if you are one of the unlucky ones who have had your identity stolen, you will say that it was a horrible 2 to 3 year ordeal that you may never get completely in the rear view mirror.

So if I read between the lines, you think that I should not be concerned? Is security and privacy of emails a non-issue? Or the recent thread on BigBrother - was that a different crowd?

Perhaps you could educate me. I have found the spam filter to only be marginally effective. Many of the spam emails have fake return addresses, so they can't be flagged and make any difference.

Do you view them one at a time, so the domain name can be put in your blocked domains list? I'm not even sure if that has any effect, with fake email addresses.

Google apps is paid, I've never had a targeted email

I'm not familiar with the Earthlink filters. Some ISP's maintain a list of known spams that are in current circulation and routinely filter these. Of course, there will be a certain amount of day zero leakage as the spammers attempt to mutate the load and frustrate these efforts. By far, the most successful filter elements examine the subject and trim things like "Viagra", "Asian girls", "Russian girls", and celebrities, such as "Oz" and "Opra". This is enough to trim the lions share of the spam that I see. If I see a recognizable pattern in items that slip through, I'll create a new rule for that. It took a few weeks to build my filter, but it is now reasonably effective.

At one point I was being bombarded with porn spam. Rather than attempting to filter or launch a ton of complaints, I picked one source that seemed to be somewhat responsible and sent them a polite note saying that I was not criticizing or interested in their product and asked if they could enter my address into some sort of database indicating that I was a six year old -- thus giving me a few years of peace. They must have enjoyed the note because porn spam dropped to essentially zero. Only occasional porn freelancers are spamming me now.

I look through the headers in an attempt to recognize patterns. In many cases it is obvious that the spams are generated by the same program or reference the same origin IP address. I'll filter for these elements. Keep in mind that most of the header elements can be faked. The most reliable line is near the top where your ISP will note which server last touched the email. Sometimes I'll notice that there is a common IP address or a domain (.ru or .br) that is suspect. I am amused that many of the spam headers include an element indicating that the message has passed some sort of "spam" screening.

My particular filter allows me to return a status. Rather than forwarding a copy of the email and complaint to the (fake) sender, I return a simple "505". My theory is that this "505" will tend to show up on lists that are more likely noticed by responsible people. In many cases I think that the source of the email is a victimized granny computer and the "505"'s might attract the attention of her ISP or someone attempting to help her out. Simply copying and returning the spam is not very effective because it is likely to be filtered somewhere along the way. I'm also assuming that the "505" is more likely to be mechanically noticed by the professional spammers and they'll remove my address from their lists because it is obviously wasting their bandwidth.

https://www.startmail.com/