Friday, July 2, 2010

Escaping Hotmail

Maybe about ten years ago I made a Hotmail account for myself, but when I started wanting to switch over to Gmail I ran into a problem.

The trouble with Hotmail, besides its slow loading times, old-fashioned UI, and the ads they embed into your messages, is that they don't enable any sort of automatic forwarding like they used to for free accounts, meaning that once you let them become your main email account, they really, really don't want you to switch over to somewhere else.



While I do occasionally enjoy reading the little MSN articles they put on the Hotmail homepage, I got tired of being locked into checking two different sites to see my mail, so in addition to updating my mailing lists and site registration emails I signed up for this free, abeit sketchy site called Hotmail Forwarder, which can forward up to five messages a day to your new mail client, a nice way to get weaned off the old mail account.

The downside is that they ask you for your Hotmail login (like I said, sketchy). I've used them for a year or so without ill effect and they seem to be legit, but if you use the service, be careful not to leave any stuff (passwords, banking/cc info) in your old account's mail folders that they could potentially use in identity theft, just in case.

I think I'm just about out of the clutches of Hotmail, since all that I seem to be getting in that inbox anymore is prescription drug spam now that most of my contacts have made the switch. It's too bad, though, that Microsoft now forces users to either pay them or entrust their login info to a third party if they want to use a better email client.

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