Info for people with Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo email accounts

[A.G.System]

OK im not sure if this should go here and im sure that a mod can change this as need be.

This is a useful guide for those of us that use Gmail and the likes for our daily email, because we either have no Base internet mail service (sharehouses) or just have no access to one.

As taken from Wired.forums
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Ditch_Yo...mail_Addresses

Ditch Your Old E-mail Addresses
From Wired How-To Wiki


Back in the 1990s, you were an early adopter. You got yourself an Aol.com address or a Hotmail address. Or, you were issued an e-mail address when you signed up for your residential internet access, which you handed out to everyone as a badge of honor.

Times have changed, and that old address is a black hole for spam. You never check it, and you don't want to. But your stupid ISP, your stubborn family members and high school buddies insist on sending you important things there.

In other words, you are a slave to an e-mail address that you don't want or which makes you use an interface that sucks. You can't give it up because thousands of your close personal friends only know you as ClassOf92@aol.com or ILoveNKOTB@hotmail.com. A blind switch to a new e-mail address is out of the question -- you probably don't even know everyone who has the old one, and grandma wouldn't understand anyway.

Here's how to move on up.

Set up camp

Get an account at real service like Gmail. Call yourself anything you want -- you won't be giving out this address.

Get a domain of your own. This is the best $10 you will ever spend. You probably won't be able to get the domain name you really want -- each one is unique, and all but the most obscure lastname.com and firstnamelastname.com combinations are already taken. Be creative (think vanity license plate) and you will probably get something close to what you want.

Tip: Read Webmonkey's tutorial, "Choose and Register a Domain Name"

Once you've got a domain, set up your mail preferences so that every e-mail sent to the domain gets accepted. Otherwise, any incoming mail not sent to your master account will bounce. This is crucial for the next step of the process.

Note: Keep in mind that you will have to pay somebody to host this domain for you and handle your e-mail. Some hosting companies offer mail-only hosting for $5/month or less, but don't expect much in the way of prompt, personalized service at those prices. You could also host your domain on Google Apps. Alternatively, you can host your own mail server. And there are some domain hosters, like mydomain.com, which will let you manage mail for free.


Redirect the traffic

On your new domain hosting service, redirect your *@[yourdomain.com] to your Gmail account.

Tell everyone in your contact book your new e-mail address. Only about 5% of your friends will pay attention, and half of those will go to the trouble of updating your deets in their address book.

Give out different addresses as much as possible. So give wired@yourdomain to wired and put bc2008@yourdomain on your business card. That way when you start receiving spam, you'll know where they got your address from and you can block a single address without having to inform all your other contacts.

On your Hotmail/AOL/whatever account, forward all of your incoming mail to a unique name at your *@domain.com account. Forward your AOL mail to aol@[yourdomain.com]. Forward your Hotmail.com mail to hotmaill@[yourdomain.com], and so on.
Spread the word

Use the "Vacation reply" in Gmail (activate it in Gmail's Settings tab) to announce to each sender your new address. Make sure that new address is the unique name described above.

On your Gmail account, filter incoming mail so that the source of each of your incoming emails is recognizable. So, filter all mail addressed to hotmail@[yourdomain.com] so it shows up labeled as "Hotmail".

Tell each of these stragglers your new address.
Cut the ties

When the trickle of e-mail from an old account approaches zero, cancel the old account or connect it to an autoresponder telling the sender the address is no longer in use and directing them to your website.

This page was last modified 20:58, 25 November 2008 by carsick. Based on work by redman, johncabell and howto_admin.

Now i know this is kind of bending the rules on how to sign up to this and many other forums but it also means that you can have all your email in one handy place too. Handy if your an iPhone user such as myself

[SHOGUNOVDDRK]

Relevant to my interests...

Good spotting btw

[Red_EG4]

I'm listening.....
good post OP

[mugeneration]

Pft. Tell people new address, keep using old one for a year, but never sending emails from it. Those who fail at updating my contact info will no longer be in contact with me.

But to OP, useful nonetheless. Dunno bout paying for email though lol

Also people who change email/phone numbers excessively should be banned from being in possession of either. Going through my phone book yesterday I found someone who had FOUR mobile numbers.

[A.G.System]

There is another way around the paying for email access though.

If you know someone that has access to a pop3 type email set up with their internet they do not use.

ill use MrX@tpg.com

I then get him to give me access to this email address.

Its a legit email and the owner never uses it so its just wasted.
What you can do then is the same set up as above but instead of signing up for a new email domain you can use the TPG one.
Following the instructions you can forward the same in gmail as per the above instructions and basically then just got to all your forums that need private email addresses and change your email to the TPG one.

It takes a few min to have the emails forward on in gmail but eventually you will see them. Then just follow the prompts and confirm the email and you have full access again.

This way YOU personally dont need access to a 3rd party connection or a separate domain.

Its what i ended up doing