Comments on: Pro Bono Advertising: In Praise of POBOX.COM

By: Catherine

Catherine — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:05:37 +0000

I've been a pobox.com customer for several years as well (I use their associated domain onepost.net) and am considering renewing, but there's one thing I have a concern about: their spam filters aren't very good. I tend to get a LOT of spam and, even worse, there are people out there spoofing my e-mail address which means I sometimes get bouncebacks on e-mails I never even sent in the first place.

What are they doing to prevent spoofing and improve their spam filters?

By: Johnathan

Johnathan — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 09:04:55 +0000

Until AT&T acquired it and ruined it (IMO), IBM.net was the best ISP I had ever run into. Excellent, very helpful service even if you called them at 2 or 3 AM, good dialup number coverage of USA & International locations, etc.

I would guess that AT&T's global dialup numbers are probably the ones that IBM had before the acquisition.

By: Anthony E. Greene

Anthony E. Greene — Wed, 08 Jan 2003 11:12:58 +0000

After I'd had personal Internet access for a couple of years, I realized that I would probably have an online identity for the rest of my life. I may be more or less active online, but I would always have an email address.

I have been active in many web discussion forums, mailing lists, newsgroups, etc over the years. I have written software and scripts that occasionally generate feedback. I run a website that has sent my email address to thousands of people over time. For me, the hassle involved in changing email address is unacceptable. The group of people I communicate with is much larger than my friends and family. I knew I needed a permanent email address.

For US$15/year, pobox provides that permanent address without tying me to a particular ISP, or to an advertising-driven webmail service.

I can still choose to forward my mail to a webmail service if I like, and I have done so on occasion. But I like to download and read mail on my own machine. I have a well-developed set of mail filters and supporting spam-elimination scripts that make it easy for me to handle lots of mail. A service like pobox gives me the flexibility I need to efficiently handle large volumes of mail, using a permanent email address, without tying me to an ISP.

I also have a personal web site that has a permanent URL, thanks to the URL redirection service included with my pobox account.

The last time I renewed my pobox account I paid for 5 years and got the 6th year free. I recommend pobox to anyone who would like to have a permanent email address without being tied to a particular ISP.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 08 Jan 2003 06:04:02 +0000

on international dialups...

I use GRIC (Global Roaming Internet Connection) in conjunction with Mindspring (now Earthlink). You can make local connections most places overseas. I have used it in China, India and the UK so I know it works well. Check it out.

www.gric.com in case the embedded link doesn't work.

Regards, Bob