But this year, I refused to fork over $99 to renew a service that has not improved with the price tag. In agreement with others stated above: I can get free, bigger, better, and faster service elsewhere.

Some months ago, I added my “complaints” to a thread of similar issues about .MAC on the Apple support discussion board, (slow speed, downtime, spam, useless “free” software, cumbersome iDisk, etc.) The reply to my post (and others) was so condescending and unhelpful…basically I am a stupid user, I need to stop whinging and .MAC is the best email system.

Immediately, I put an auto responder on my .mac account to let everyone know that I was discontinuing my .mac account and to contact me on my gmail account. My .mac account expired three months later and I didn’t renew. Most everyone got the message.

Thanks All. I wont be singing up for this.

“Look out kid
Don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don’t try “No Doz”
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows”

s: Subterranean Homesick Blues

And yes there are certain things that I would not write down in any email .Mac or Gmail.

As for the free alternatives to .Mac mail using information contained in emails as a marketing tool (ala Gmail) that is something that I am aware of and I accept. I also believe that it is algorithms rather than human intervention that provide these encroachments into privacy / extra value services depending on your view point.

Whilst I do not consider the contents of my emails public domain I equally accept that they may be viewed by the company that provides the service or the government, that is if I was to do anything that would arouse suspicion. As to how these electronic communications would gain the interest of the authorities I would think that an individual would have to be mentioning certain words / phrases for the filters to pick up on them. I’m not sure how mind blowingly complex this issue could get or if the powers that be are scanning everything everybody is doing anyway. It does stand to reason that if Google are analysing the email contents for marketing purposes it would be very simple for them to track anything untoward.

I know that the UK police have foiled a number of terrorist attacks recently I wonder if any of these successes have been helped by the relaxation of privacy laws?

I would be uncomfortable if Google sold my Data to a 3rd party rather than matched the contents with possible services. However I do not believe that this is how they do business please correct me if I’m wrong as we are getting very deep here.

As for stealing data I would think the risks would be comparable what ever email service you used (so long as it isn’t Bob the crooks email service). We all have to take our security seriously online and off-line.

I don’t think it is off topic as this discussion will at least inform people about the pro’s and con’s of something so “simple” as signing up to a free email service and dropping .Mac.

I would like to say that I’m a left wing person and I do take these issues seriously. However I’m not looking to do harm to anyone or commit a crime so I don’t really worry about privacy in this instance.

You don’t have to be a “bad guy” or do something illegal in order to care about your privacy. We need to be able to communicate without someone listening, reading or examining what we say, with who and how.

Privacy is something that we tend to give up on recently for the sake of our security, although it doesn’t seem to have helped a lot. And at the same time, our lives become more transparent and we become more vulnerable to those who handle our personal information.

And there is no guarantee that our information will always remain in the hands of those who care about us in a good way. Data get lost, sold, stolen… and you may never know about it.

Thanks for allowing me to be a little off-topic.

You could also say that Google and Yahoo have questionable morals with regards to China for instance, but from recent reports Apple could also try harder (and now are doing).

I would say that I’m a pretty average web user apart from being a builder of websites and I certainly don’t produce sites for any bad guys…

My point being on the whole if you keep your nose clean then you have nothing to worry about.

muchos tacos ;-)

Best wishies for everyOneOutThere(be_good:Mind;be_free:Mind;be_strong:BrainStructure);

Diego