What you possess can only be lost
but what you are will be yours forever

Hi Ya'll,

If you spend much time online, you've no doubt noticed a lot of sites offering various free services have disappeared, merged with other companies, and/or now charge for the once free service. Most of the now-chargers apologized and attempted to explain why they were "forced" to do it to stay in business.

Yahoo! has been losing money badly of late and I was expecting them to follow suit and begin charging for some of their money pit services, such as POP3 mail and Web site hosting. They've begun doing that, as many of you know. I was also expecting a "We're sorry, but we're being forced to charge $2/mo for the pitance of server space for the Hosting service, and $1/mo for POP3 e-mail." But ohhhh, nooooo ......

That friendly, something-for-everyone, and it's all free, place called Yahoo! has turned on its serious users with a vengence and told us in no uncertain terms, "The free ride is over — start paying exorbitant prices for our services, or get off the train." And they've become devious. Read on ....

If you know someone who would like the following information, feel free to forward this newsletter, or just send them the link (top of letter) to read it online.

If you've registered for anything on Yahoo!, you have received, or will soon, a Notification of their "Revised Privacy Policy." About the only thing which is new is that they now consider any and all personal information they've collected about you as an "asset" which can be sold to another company should Yahoo be sold/merged into another company/go out of business. But this annoucement is also a very underhanded attempt to get you to update your personal information. Be careful if you do. They are trying to get you to give your complete street address and phone number. They claim they are now required "for most services." I haven't given them that information, I'm signed up for three services, and they all work just fine. Why that new requirement?

On March 28, Yahoo instituted a Marketing Preferences page. The link to it is "hidden" in the revised Privacy Policy page. Yahoo hopes (in my opinion,) if you're one of the very few who will make a cursory scan of the Privacy Policy, you won't notice it or won't visit it. On this Marketing Preferences page, you'll discover you have given Yahoo! permission to send you Fourteen (14) e-mail "newsletters" PLUS U.S.Mail garbage can stuffers PLUS Telemarketing calls, all without you having to take the time to give them permission. They are so kind and thoughtful.

But you can tell those yahoos, "Enuf already!" Go to http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount at any time before May 1 to plug this well before the SPAM gushes. Login, click the NO radio button of everything (except, if applicable, Yahoo! Delivers, which is required for POP3 access to, or Forwarding of, Yahoo! Mail), click the Save Changes button, then the Logout link in the upper right corner of the Changes Made page you'll be presented. You have to do this for *each* Yahoo! ID you have.

If you access Yahoo! Mail via a POP3 compatible program such as Outlook Express, or are set up to have your Yahoo! Mail automatically forwarded to another e-mail address, wait to turn off the SPAM until those services are cut off on April 24 and you won't have to visit the no-spam page again to turn off Yahoo! Delivers.

If you don't use the POP3 or Forwarding options of Yahoo! Mail, you may skip this section, but on the other hand there may be something here you'll find interesting.

Yahoo! thinks they can soak me $90/yr for POP3 access to my three e-mail accounts. They are wrong. I had worked up a partial solution to having another "permanent" address, but it's not for everyone, and have spent the better part of three days getting addresses changed on all my newsletter subscriptions, site registrations, program registrations, etc. (and I'm still not done,) before Yahoo cuts off my water.

I'd been looking high and low, to no avail, for another supplier of free, or very low cost, combination POP3/Web mail accounts, when out of the blue here comes a newsletter from those nice folks at CloudEight saying they'd found one, and it was free!

This free site is run by Novel, who compete with Microsoft in the market for corporate networking software with their NetWare, NIMS, etc., products. Why on earth would they make free e-mail accounts available to the general public; they're not in that business? They use them to do a final "real world" test of revisions and tweaks to the Novell Internet Messaging System (NIMS) before putting them into production, and so potential customers can "see" NIMS in action by using and testing it in a "real world" environment. As "payment" for the free accounts, which are also ad-free, they only ask that if you find something not working as you think it should, you immediately contact them and explain the problem; fair enough.

So, if being a "real world" Beta tester doesn't scare you, and you'd like an e-mail account (or two or three) accessable from the Web (via any browser), and/or from any POP3 client (e.g., MS Outlook Express), and/or from any IMAP client (e.g., MS Outlook), which has a 10MB space allowance, the URL (Web address) is http://www.MyRealBox.com/.

But before you run over there, there are a few things you should do and know:

• Read everything (all the buttons across the top, Terms of Service at the bottom) before clicking the Sign Up link.
• There is no Help button or link; you're totally on your own.
• When you sign up:
  • Accept the default of "Web account," unless you know what the other option is all about and will use those features.
  • All the information they request is the UserID you want to use, and your real e-mail address (the one assigned by your ISP (Internet Service Provider);) they won't accept a Yahoo, or other "free" e-mail account. They will mail you a password. The one I get was all uppercase. Passwords are case sensitive, so if yours has any uppercase characters, be sure to enter them that way.
• When you get your password and log in the first time, immediately go to Preferences.
• Change your password, if desired, and anything else you need/want to. The Purge preference, if chosen, sets "Delete button" to immediately throw away the checked files rather than mark them for deletion. Scroll all the way to the very bottom and click the Apply button on the bar at the bottom edge of the screen.
• The Inbox has buttons for Purge, Delete, and Fast Delete. Like Yahoo Mail, you can ignore all that stuff if you're going to fetch your mail with Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, etc.
• "Purge" means to permanently remove all Checked-Marked and/or previously Deleted messages (same as Empty the Deleted Files Folder in Yahoo Mail.) Deleted mail remains in the Inbox, but with the Subject crossed out to indicate is has been flagged for deletion, so you can still change your mind and undelete it. The Quick Delete button "purges" that message immediately.

To use your new account in Outlook Express, click Tools + Accounts + Add + Mail.

• Set Server type to                     POP3
• The Incoming mail server is    pop.myrealbox.com
• The Outgoing mail server is    smtp.myrealbox.com

Click Here

'Til next time,
Pete

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