Talktalk charging for mail to none customers

So you mean like my old Line one address which for some unknown reason still works incoming even after zillions of years. Actually its interesting that they are willing to actually allow people off network to have email with them. This might be a good thing that Virgin could do, then when the Bt Openreach finally makes the grade at less dosh, I could move but still keep the old email for a year or so while folk got themselves used to a new one. Brian

Buy a domain and use someone to host a mail server for you. About £10 a year or less.

Using the ISP mail service is sill unless its for throw away addresses.

Even hotmail is better.

Brian Gaff brought next idea :

I only have an email mentioning TT and my own Tiscali address, but I expect they will switch all of the accounts they hoovered up too.

Buy your own domain and redirect mail from it to your ISP's servers and instruct your ISP's servers to send mail on your domain's behalf. Wait a few years and the only email address everyone will know is your domain one. You are then free to move ISPs whenever you want and just change the redirection.

If you want to be more fancy, you can run your own mail server (a Raspberry Pi will do), but still go through your ISP's servers (it makes it easier to not have your email server blocked that way). Then when you move ISPs, your existing mail comes with you too!

SteveW

But many people block all hotmail addresses because of the large number of spammers that use/used that service.

Yet you get very little spam from hotmail. The filters are very good.

I think I have only had three spam mails get to my inbox in the last six months.

The problem with that comes when you send e-mail to people whose mail providers run SPF checks, such as Gmail. They will spot that the Sender: line in your messages does not agree with the SMTP server that sent it, and they may either label it as dodgy or spam-bin it.