What Your Email Address Says About You

[asiaboy]

What Your Email Address Says About You

So are we all using Gmail?

[daedal]

haha yep gmail here!

[attis]

Actually I wanted to set up two or three Gmail adresses two weeks ago, but when they asked for my phone number to confirm them, I just said :wtf: :no: :NoWay: :fuckyou:

[PUMPaul]

LOL
I have 3 yahoo e-mail addresses and except for the female, kids, clothes magazines, and pajamas part it was pretty spot on!!! (the 3 ! added to prove a point only!)

Obviosly I'm male and sit around the house naked, not in pajamas. I do read a lot of magazines when I travel though and could certainly stand to lose more than a few pounds.

Except for one point, I should get a gmail account but I'm not going to give them my phone number either if it's required.

[asiaboy]

I don't recall Gmail asking for my phone number. But they can have it if they want. In fact, Gmail has a nice new security feature. When you login it sends an SMS with verification code to your phone. You can only get in with the code. Just like my bank. Now it is impossible to hack.

[attis]

I tried several countries to sign up for a gmail account without phone verification, but apparently they've covered almost the whole world by now.

Google has changed the white hat against a black one a long time ago and I simply don't like them to collect any of my personal data. It has become a habit for more and more sites to collect whatever data they can and no one knows what they are going to do with it. I know it's hard work, but I try to limit my publicly available data as much as possible.

I know I'm old fashioned about this, but so far it has served me well. I don't see a reason to change it, just because nowadays the young folks have all their lifes available on the internet.

[Gin]

I have gmail account, but i don't recall them asking my phone. I also have an account in yahoo actually

[HunkyLuke]

I have a gmail account that I needed to open for google analytics, but I don't use it. I purposely don't use any free email service as I read a couple years back that those free accounts can be audited by the US government without any notice, and the article went on to say that it was illegal for the email provider to actually give you notice of a pending audit!!!

[attis]

They first started to ask for phone confirmation in a few countries only. I had asked a friend of mine in Eastern Europe who was sure that he didn't had to give his phone number when he opened his gmail account a while ago. When he tried to create an account for me, they were asking for his phone number now. So apparently they've changed their policies in many, if not all, countries by now.

Mainly I use freemail accounts for private purposes as junk addresses. They are quite handy when you sign up somewhere, so when those addresses end up being sold to spammers your good addresses don't get polluted. I once used icqmail and the mailboxes are full of spam now. So happy auditing.

As for Google Analytics it is (was?) not necessary to use a gmail account. I started with Analytics long before I thought about getting gmail. They still keep nagging me from time to time to sign up for gmail, but it's not mandatory.