I have not yet received an email from Yahoo announcing the end of free
forwarding and POP3 retrieval.

I just made the adjustment to iName.com's (ne: Mail.com) decision to charge
for forwarding, and now Yahoo is going non-free for all but the most
rudimentary of email functions.  iName had advertized "free email for life"
- and that's how I used my old who.net vanity address for many years -
forwarding it to a Bigfoot.com free address (since discarded when they
decided to charge for everything) where it was filtered and re-directed.

iName/Mail.com simply slammed me - I had no time to prepare, so I paid for
1 year of "Premium" service just so I could get my correspondents
transitioned away from my old "lifetime" address.

At least Yahoo has given us a month to prepare.

Bottom line is that it's now cheaper for me to run my own "virtual server"
(still at communitech.net, as long as they mind their manners) with email,
web hosting, and such, than it is to pay separately for all the functions
and features I want.  If I want to change to another email host, I can
alter my DNS records for that purpose and still retain my personal
addresses.

Having my own domain has been great because I can create new email
addresses on-the-fly; any undefined email addresses to my domain roll over
to my primary account.  If I sign up for a newsletter at
www.potential-spammer.com, I tell them my email address is
[log in to unmask] Later, I can block that address, or
maybe even hold potential-spammer.com legally accountable for sharing my
information.

Now, I'd leave communitech.net and run my own Linux server at home if it
weren't for the expense of commercial bandwidth. I am wondering now about
applying the old CO-OP idea to datacomm and maybe to hosting co-location.
Who's got ideas in this direction?

-Dave D.

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