...
SOLUTION
I found Bluebottle.com quite by hazard, by typing into Google "Free pop email", and then eliminating the competition that was either not appealing or I had tried before and had not lived up to my expectations.
SITE ARRIVAL
On arriving on the site of Bluebottle.com, I was ... Read review
.../>
I found Bluebottle.com quite by hazard, by typing into Google "Free pop email", and then eliminating the competition that was either not appealing or I had tried before and had not lived up to my expectations.
SITE ARRIVAL
On arriving on the site of Bluebottle.com, I was offered up to 3 separate accounts, although I shall only need one. It may be useful for families where different members of the ... ...friendly. It tells you how Bluebottle.com have developed 100 per cent effective blocking of unwanted mail which in this day and age was just what I was looking for.
SIGNING UP
Signing up with Bluebottle was very simple, and your account is confirmed by email to any existing account that you may have.
WHAT BLUEBOTTLE OFFERS.
Bluebottle offers you webmail, pop and IMAP access, an account ... more
I have had non stop problems with the internet since I started using it five years ago. Either the problems are caused by my computer itself (or my lack of knowledge), or by people who are mean, and want to spoil the Internet experience for everyone, regardless of who they are, and not taking into account that people pay vast sums of money for their computers, and do not want the added problem of viruses which are rife on the Internet at the moment.
I tried many email accounts that run in conjunction with my Outlook Express, and many of these have been broken by the massive surge of virused emails that is circulating the internet, which is very sad. I happen to like Outlook Express better than writing emails online with the likes of AOL or hotmail or yahoo, because they seem more personal, I have offline access to what I have written and to the mails that people send me.
SOLUTION
I found Bluebottle.com quite by hazard, by typing into Google "Free pop email", and then eliminating the competition that was either not appealing or I had tried before and had not lived up to my expectations.
SITE ARRIVAL
On arriving on the site of Bluebottle.com, I was offered up to 3 separate accounts, although I shall only need one. It may be useful for families where different members of the family want to receive their email separately, or for people who want to have their business or study email separate from their personal email.
The greeting on the site was quite friendly. It tells you how Bluebottle.com have developed 100 per cent effective blocking of unwanted mail which in this day and age was just what I was looking for.
SIGNING UP
Signing up with Bluebottle was very simple, and your account is confirmed by email to any existing account that you may have.
WHAT BLUEBOTTLE OFFERS.
Bluebottle offers you webmail, pop and IMAP access, an account that holds 250MB of information, which is adequate online space when you have the pop facility and can have your emails regularly forwarded directly to your computer.
SO CAN THEY COMPLY WITH THEIR PROMISE OF NO SPAM AND NO UNWELCOME MAIL ?
Well here, Bluebottle have a very clever system and when you start to use your account, you begin to understand how it all works. Yahoo and other sites sort what they believe is spam into a junk file, but Bluebottle go one better and do not assume that anything you are sent is junk, nor do they assume that it is welcome email. They have a rather clever system of letting you sort out who’s emails you want to read, and nothing is sent through to your computer, without you having allowed it.
HOW DOES IT WORK ?
Basically until you have set up allowed addresses that you want to receive mail from, like family and friends, you actually receive nothing on your computer at all. Every email that is forwarded to your address is kept onsite, in a pending file, and you can check in daily and make the decision whether to receive mail or not onto your computer.
CONTROLS
The site is very simple to navigate and across the top of the screen you have a control panel with options of Inbox, Compose, Trusted, Allowed, Blocked, Pending, Method, Folders, Search, Options, a handy Wizard and Log off.
The obvious ones of course are your inbox and compose, although I would warn people that have pop up stoppers that you need to disable the pop up stopper in order to compose an email or in fact to read one, although the pop up stopper that I have is simply manipulated to allow pop ups that I require.
Trusted is where emails go from people who you have chosen as just that, trusted senders. If you are nervous about what is in your inbox, by pressing the trusted button you can see how many of your emails are from people that you trust and these are separated from other emails for smoother use of the account. I am not certain that this feature is worthy of use at all, although with experience, I may feel differently. For me, the other features do what I need to be done in order to protect myself from unwanted mail.
Allowed shows you the list of people whose mail you know and trust. This list can be added to either directly from your address book, although here I would recommend individual entries because that way, no mistakes are made. Adding new contacts is simple and effective straight away.
Blocked is an obvious place, where lists of all blocked emailers is recorded for your future reference. I actually find this useful since I have had a lot of hate mail and I like the fact that I can switch off this kind of rubbish at the click of a button which is what mails of this kind deserve.
Pending is the interesting part of this site. It is where all emails go that you have not consented to. It’s a little like the junk mail box in Hotmail or Yahoo but the difference is that Bluebottle do not assume it to be junk. They leave that decision to you, and all unread mails after a seven day period, which is ample, are deleted.
Method is a place where you can chose the reception that people that email you get. You can chose to have emailers verify their identity. Personally, with all the other safeguards that the site has, I believe this is superfluous, although the choice is there to be taken should you feel the need, and you can allow only people who can verify a given code to be able to email you, although with all the other choices on the site, this seems a little fanatical.
WHAT DO I THINK OF THE EXPERIENCE
I have only allowed family and a few friends onto this website as allowed members, and trust that these will be the only emails to arrive safely in my inbox on Outlook Express. Therefore, I feel that I have limited the chances of getting a virus. Of course, there is always the possibility of one of my family receiving a virus that contaminates their address book, and thus me, although I do have a good Virus protection on my computer to deal with these isolated cases.
I really like this form of email because it does not assume that every user wants the same thing like Hotmail and Yahoo do. You can individualize your own use of the site, and although I allowed Ciao alerts on this account, I have changed that because I was afraid of a large company like Ciao being targeted with piggyback viruses that sneak in with the alerts. Who knows it may happen. The account deals with my alerts in a different way and keeps them online for me to view as and when I want to, instead of sending all of them to my Outlook Express and jamming it up with rubbish I really do not want to keep on the computer.
I enjoyed using the wizard on the site to set up my preferences. I enjoy the fact that when I turn on Outlook Express I am going to have no surprises because nothing comes into my mailbox on my computer without my permission. I enjoy the safety aspect, and actually enjoy using Outlook more than writing emails online. Somehow it seems more personal.
I also like a rather clever link that the site has with Hotmail and MSN and other pop accounts that you may have on the internet and here the site comes into its own, offering you similar protection from any one of these accounts, simply by typing in your information and letting bluebottle do the rest.
The site were also a lot more user friendly than most pop mail servers that I have used in the past, in that they do not assume you to be a whiz kid and give you clear instructions as to how to make pop mail work, either with outlook express, Netscape or Outlook. Setting my account up was simple and I have had no problems whatsoever with an email account that was completely free, totally painless and user friendly.
I would strongly recommend that Bluebottle.com is worthy of a second look.
