Another Day With My PC

How many e-mail addresses do you have? I bet that you have at least two. With all the free offers from MSN, Yahoo!, and Google, it’s hard not to keep a few mistresses. My primary e-mail account is sponsored by Yahoo!, while my secondary account is from Gmail.

Some say that the viability or feasibility of free e-mail accounts would soon be defeated by users like me who keep two or three addresses. The argument seems persuasive, but it is also flawed. True, the needless opening of accounts wastes space on Yahoo! or Hotmail’s servers. However, with storage real estate getting cheaper by the day, one would wonder if anything is wasted at all.

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One thing that’s definitely squandered, though, is the address. It’s almost a certainty that the e-mail address that you prefer has already been taken by somebody else. You’ll probably need to add a series of numbers after your preferred e-mail address in order to make it unique and personal.

There are people who purposely register multiple e-mail addresses. They won’t be using those accounts, though. Instead, they would be selling it to persons who want to have that account. Those addresses usually bear a very common name or a popular or catchy word.

Segregation

Going back to my contention that having multiple e-mails is not exactly needless or wasteful, many people keep multiple addresses in order to separate the good from the bad, the precious from the worthless, and above all, the spam from the ham.

Like thousands of people around the globe, I keep separate e-mails for work and play. My Gmail account keeps all correspondences from my boss and officemates, while my Yahoo! address keeps all those letters, e-cards, and hilarious mails from relatives and friends.

Bigger and Better

Five years ago, one of the main reasons why people maintain multiple e-mail accounts is because of limited storage space. Those who receive mails with large attachments always keep around 3-5 e-mail accounts.

Storage space problems are already relics of the past. Gigabytes of space are now being offered even on free accounts. This is virtually limitless, unless you’re constantly trading large multimedia files. If size is all that you’re worrying about, then I could assure you that you only need one e-mail account. To borrow Gmail’s ad, you’ll never need to delete another message again. To have a secondary e-mail, then, due to space concerns is a needless glut.

Spam

Another reason why people open up second or third accounts is that their primary e-mail has already been infested with junk mails. Spam has been a major problem for both e-mail account providers and holders alike for the past several years. Those who had it bad receive hundreds, or even thousands, of worthless and unsolicited mails on a daily basis. While many e-mail accounts have a “Report as Spam” feature, the unwanted mails usually find their way back to the addresses.

E-mail account holders should be very responsible in opening and maintaining addresses. It’s common knowledge that free services or products tend to be abused. Don’t waste precious space and addresses. They might be free and abundant, but they’re certainly not unlimited.

Be also vigilant in checking the source of suspicious or unknown e-mails as they usually carry harmful attachments or point you to links that contain unwanted applications which could modify your Windows registry and other system files. Always scan attachments before downloading them. If you think you’ve inadvertently opened an infected e-mail, open up your registry cleaner and antivirus and conduct a complete system scan.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 8:21 am and is filed under General . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.