Identity Crisis-part 1

Back when the internet was new and sites were handing out free for life email addresses with custom domains, I decided to take advantage of this to create for myself an email address which could be used no matter which ISP I happened to be using. It was common practice in the early days as internet service providers sometimes didn't stay in business for long, or a cheaper service would come along which provided better/faster service.

As a rural mail carrier,  I wanted something that would reflect that in an email address, and so I chose postman@writeme.com. I gave this address out to my friends and family so that no matter what ISP I happened to be using, people would know that they could always reach me at that address.

This worked well, for awhile, but soon it became a chore to check a web based email account in addition to my regular ISP email as it could be easily checked using a dedicated email client like Eudora. I didn't even have to think about it, Eudora checked the server for mail on a regular basis and happily alerted me if I had new mail.

At some point, the web based services began to offer premium services, some free, but some for a low annual fee. The one I used offered free forwarding, so I just set up my postman account to forward to whatever ISP service I happened to be using, and this worked very well, at least until they apparently figured out they were losing money on the deal and began charging for the service.

As I recall, the service charged $9.95 a year to forward your web email to another address, but for the same price, they would allow you to use their server as a POP based server, so that email clients could be used to download your web mail. I figured this would be easier to keep track of so I signed up. Of course you needed a credit card so they could auto charge it each year and make sure they got paid.

Fast forward to today, the service is now $19.95 a year and I'm retired, so I've had to make some changes in my spending habits. Not that twenty bucks a year makes that much difference, but it's the principle to me now as there are too many free services like this available not to take advantage of them.

Gmail and Hotmail are probably the two biggest names which come to mind, so in part two, we will examine just what happens when you have the ability to choose a name to use for this identity which will follow you on your journey through the interweb...