jamescho

Not sure if you're ever in China, but if you are, note that Google services are usually blocked and require a VPN to get access. Whereas Apple and Microsoft services work fine.

Silver Fox

I never use a public computer. If I want emails I take my own device.

FlyerGoldII

I have never been in China.

I have been in Hong Kong - presumably Hong Kong does not have the blockage of Google Services.

In China, can one access yahoo emails? Is hotmail a microsoft account?
I was not aware one can get apple email accounts - do they have personalized customer service?

shonamac

Does anyone have recommendations for an e-mail service other than Google / Microsoft and its various brands / Yahoo? I dislike having to give my information to providers who then mine that information to snoop on / sell to me!

FirstInFlight

This is always a fun issue. Every day, millions of people check into hotels around the world, use the hotel's wifi, and never have an issue with hackers. But, every day, some do have an issue.

So, like seat belts and smoke alarms, many people zealously follow safety protocols while others figure it won't happen to them.

If you travel is generally within your home country and if you generally stay at "good" hotels then you might have better odds. But those who travel overseas and travel for a living and have seen the horror that follows a hacking know rhat the time and money spent to prevent one may seem wasteful, until you are trying to deal with the fallout.

An ounce of prevention and all that.

gfunkdave

If you don't want them to try selling to you, you'll need to be a paying customer. I suggest looking at Rackspace or Amazon , or just buy a single mailbox Office 365 subscription.

Hong Kong does not have the Internet blocked as on the mainland.

I don't think any free email tier will come with personalized customer service. You have to pay for these things.

icloud.com is Apple's site for mail and such.

FlyerGoldII

I have not ruled out paid email service, if it provides me good telephone and other (eg email and/or chat) customer service (if a telephone, miminal wait time before getting through a customer service rep).

So the 2 questions of these paid services are:

a) is it less likely to be hacked then the free services?
b) if through hacking, the full years (or longer) worth of emails is deleted, does the email service have the emails retrievable. I ask this question because with the work (hospital) intranet that I use, a few years ago, through some technical one-time glitch, all my emails were deleted. However, the hospital kept all my emails and email files copied on their server; so they could retrieve all the emails for me except for a few sent or received for a few previous hours.

shonamac

Paying money to fall into the clutches of Mr. Softie? No thank you.

Besides although a paid subscription may help avoiding overt ads, once MS has access to your activities, contacts etc. they would be foolish not to use that information to their own advantage, in every way they can.

nkedel

I've yet to hit one which won't let me hand them a USB key.

The Office 365 for business privacy policies are pretty good (ditto the paid Google Apps for Business); several prior employers and my current one have sufficiently serious lawyers and security guys, and trust one or the other.

I have my doubts about whether that applies to the basic Office 365 for Home Use subscriptions, but in Google's case there is only one paid sort of subscription.

Coolers

I have never tried this option though you're probably right. Using this method should be combined with a robust antivirus solution on your laptop. IMO failure to do so poses a greater risk than a public computer with a keylogger. There have been many, public hacks of hotel systems.

nkedel

A robust antivirus solution is a very good idea for tons of reasons.

The most important thing is just have a cheapo disposable key and wipe it after you're done using it to hand over files to print; risks are much bigger if there are files you want to keep and may open later.

gfunkdave

You should read the associated privacy policies and terms of use, and then make an informed decision.

a) Any of the big providers will be quite secure from generic hackers. It's up to you, the user, to practice responsible security on your account such as using two factor authentication.

b) Many providers offer an email archiving service for an additional fee. It sounds like this is something you'd be interested in.

WorldLux

That's the spirit. It's funny waiting at an Apple Store reading emails of strangers, that thought it would be a good idea to sent emails from the demo phones.

Then, you'll need to pay for the services. It's probably best to go for a small provider as they draw less attention.

cblaisd

I would find a local isp and set up an email account. You are probably talking $10-20/month?

Then either use their webmail interface or something like the secure login option on https://mail2web.com/

WilcoRoger

Why don't you do this yourself? Use a real e-mail client (not webmail interface) and set it to download messages to your computer. Once there, you can just have them sitting there or archive them on other media.