what free email accounts do you recommend?

[Sanity Claws]

My fellow loungers,

I have become a complete and total conspiracy theorist. I want to rebel against the machine of government and internet spying. What email account would you recommend for a nut like me?

I now use gmail but have heard how Google freely shares info with Big Bro. Is there an alternative?

[AsahinaKimi]

1. I use

Hotmail and Yahoo mail. I mostly use my hotmail for spam mail.. so have to go clean it out once in a while.

[Sanity Claws]

2. I won't use hotmail

My last hotmail account was hijacked. I tried to close it but couldn't. Microsoft wouldn't help.

I'll keep Yahoo in mind. Thanks.

[femmocrat]

3. My hotmail account was hijacked, too.

I have had Yahoo for years with no problems. I don't use it for my personal emails.

[Turbineguy]

4. Check out

gmx.com

[Suich]

5. I use

juno.com

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. My Yahoo account was hacked

I don't like hotmail because the screen is too small. So I use gmail. But I also have me.com and like that more and more all the time.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Lots. But pretty much all the reliable ones...

have been beaten into submission and give the gummint spies what they want. Besides, the NSA now has enough computer power to read all our emails without asking.

The good news is that there's too much data for them to deal with, so most of our stuff won't actually be read. The bad news is that if anyone innocently or accidentally uses keywords they're looking for, your mail, and everything else about you, might probably be scrutinized. If they subpoena your activity, they're gonna get what they want no matter what you were told by your ISP or email service.

So, what do I use? Been using Yahoo for years because so far they haven't actively sold my information like Google does-- at least i don't think they have. And the service has been absolutely reliable. I have had problems with IMAP and they charge 25 bucks a year for POP service, but other than that I have no complaints.

Here's a list of 20 email services, all of which seem pretty good, but the article doesn't talk about security.

http://email.about.com/od/freeemailreviews/tp/free_email.htm

[bigwillq]

8. I have Yahoo and GMail

Yahoo has too much spam, but I still use it.
I like GMail.

If someone's going to spy, they're going to spy. They're probably already doing things we don't even know about.
Not going to worry about that because there's not much I can do about it.

[applegrove]

9. I wouldn't think it matters what email you use. I know from personal use that the yahoo account

my brother had just plain stopped working for me one day. I could not send him anything. So I would avoid yahoo for that reason.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

10. Unless you're using a secure email account,

it doesn't matter which service you use.

Emails are routed in plain text through the internet through publicly exposed data routing equipment, and they can be read by anyone with enough expertise to use Google to find out how. The government is less likely to have people with that level of smarts (I work for the government, so I know), including the idiots at the FBI.