TRUSTWORTHY email forwarding

[Ric]

Hello,

I intend to sail around the Med this year and will be using PAYG SIM cards, a GSM phone, and a PDA to pick up email. The drawback of this system is that every time one changes country (and thus PAYG card) one's email address changes. In the past I have got around this by using a bigfoot forwarding address, so that my email address always stays the same.

Unfortunately I no longer regard Bigfoot as trustworthy - I think they pass the address to the spammers in order to make a quick buck. Even if one pays a subscription for "spam filtering" I reckon they still sell the address. Also, they charge in USD, and that lowers my trust of them even more.

So now to my question - does anybody know of a TRUSTWORTHY email forwarding system, and preferably one that charges in UKP or Euro?

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[BrendanS]

Ric,

Not sure I totally follow your reasoning. With GSM and a PDA, why not simply keep a standard email address and access via POP. No need to use a forwarding service then?

<hr width=100% size=1>Utinam logica falsa tuam philisophiam totam suffodiant

 

[ubuysa]

Get yourself a free Yahoo or Hotmail address, no hang on - don't holler just yet....

Both will allow you to pick up mail from your home account via the POP3 protocols. Once logged on to your Yahoo or Hotmail account you'll need to setup to do this, and you'll need to know the name of your home ISPs mail server (usually mail.yourisp.co.uk). Once that's setup you can pick up all your home mail from anywhere via the Yahoo or Hotmail account. You can even choose to leave the emails on your home ISP server (or not).

Personally I'd get a Yahoo account, they seem to suffer less from spam than Hotmail accounts.

Tony C.

<hr width=100% size=1>There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[Ric]

Yes this is fine - if I had a "home" email POP address. however, I do not want to maintain a subscription to another ISP simply to have access to POP email. Also, your solution only allows me to RECEIVE email. In order to send email, I need to use the GSM providers SMTP server. It is possible to do this, filling in a different email address for the return, but it is not an elegant solution.

Maybe you know of a free POP email provider?

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[Laurin]

Not really up to speed with this kind of thing, but my Talk21 account is migrating to Yahoo and as one of the benefits you can have a POP address for £3 per month... would this be any help?

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[ubuysa]

Ok, I see your problem. You might find a better solution here <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.emailaddresses.com/>http://www.emailaddresses.com/</A>. Click on the "free email" link, you'll find loads of free POP3 mail providers.

Tony C.

<hr width=100% size=1>There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[pandroid]

Thats not true. Using a Telcos outgoing SMTP server (Vodafones is smtp.vodafone.net) has no effect on what the user sees, and you dont need passwords. We use it on the boat all the time. You keep a 'no ties' account with an ISP like Freeserve for your incoming mail (which you've probably got already). The ISP will allow you to access your POP server (incoming mail) over the net without charge, it just wont allow outgoing mail (which is why you use the Telcos server)

You dont change any of your configuration except the SMTP server address.

I wrote all about this on our website <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.kissen.co.uk/communications.htm>here</A>

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[BigART]

I am not so sure about Yahoo. I subscribe to the Westerly Owners Assoc discussioin group and I am being deluged with spam and virus ridden emails at the moment (10-15 per day). Other in the group seem to suffer as well.

<hr width=100% size=1>I could well be wrong, if so I apologise - please correct me.

 

[MedMan]

A very elegant and cheap method is to have your own domain. I use a company called 1&1 Web Hosting. You can find them <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.oneandone.co.uk> here </A>

I have a single .com domain and what is called Domain Mail Plus. The two together cost me about £16 per year but, if you have a .co.uk address it would only be £9 per year. The Domain Mail Plus package gives you 3 POP mailboxes which you can access with your favourite Mail Client via a mobile phone link or from an Internet Cafe using 1&1's own web access page. It also provides use of an authorised (password protected) SMTP Server for outgoing mail. With this set-up, no matter how or from where you gain access to the Internet you will always have access to your personal mailboxes for under a tenner a year!

I am off into the wild blue yonder tomorrow so I shall not be around to answer any supplementary questions, but do check out the site.

Wishing you trouble-free communications.

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.yachtretreat.com>http://www.yachtretreat.com</A>

 

[MainlySteam]

Do you not have GSM service providers who provide their own free IMAP and POP mail servers and have international roaming? Without checking in detail all the Med countries, but with a New Zealand domiciled account we can roam to most (if not all) for data, and many for GPRS (prepay also I understand) - I would have thought it would have been a doddle for an EC domiciled account.

If so, one can use them for GSM and get an email address with them. Can then use that address exclusively sending and receiving all your emails then by land from anywhere at cafe or whatever costs, or over GSM if in a country with a roaming agreement with your provider, using it. This comes at the cost of international GPRS or data charging rather than domestic, however for POP and IMAP the amount of data is minimal unless attachments are involved (plus the cheapness of GPRS if used).

Alternatively, have family or friend somewhere in the world set up an account for you in their email client eg Outlook Express under their own ISP account using an alias eg ric@friendsisp and set up a message rule in their email client forwarding all mail with that alias address to your current email address. They can use a message rule to dump a copy into a folder seperate from all of their own mail or if you do not have critical mail the rule could just delete it after forwarding to you. This has a disadvantage if they go away and do not leave their PC running you get no mail.

Both these work, it is what we do except that for the second, we just leave one of our own PC's running on land unattended forwarding our mail to our GSM provider's POP/IMAP server ie combines both of the above approaches.

We provide the second option as a service to our son - some of his mail comes to us under an alias in our own ISP email account and it is automatically forwarded by us to his current other address.

John

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[dk]

Hi Ric

This may not be exactly what you want but I have had a free fsmail.net email account for 5 years now. It is webmail from Freeserve, so you have to be on the net to access it, just like hotmail, but I have never had any spam on it, ever. It doesn't have any fancy graphics so logging on takes no time at all, and you can see what the message is without downloading. This has worked well all over the EU with GSM and Thuraya satlink, and transatlantic and the Carib using an Iridium phone. Or you can use an internet cafe where one is available.

Another option is to use a host like sailmail, who forward your email after stripping off any unnecessary rubbish, images and spam. I used it last year via Iridium and it worked well. You can have a second address that will allow attachments, and only give this to approved clients - we used it for receiving weather charts. It will cost you though.

Good luck, Duncan

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[Ric]

Thanks for all the replies. Since posting, I've found that Google are shortly going to launch a service that seems ideal - web and pop access, no spam, and lots of storage.

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