Gmail is a very good alternative service. Pros - POP3 access, no advertising signature. Cons - Hard to get a good user name & it is occasionally unavailable for a few hours at a time.

One suggestion I'd like to offer is to register your own domain name from any of the major registrars that offer free name forwarding. I use www.namecheap.com, but there are a lot of others like: register.com, godaddy.com, etc.

I currently pay about $11 a year for registering the name along with their anonymous registration service. This is one example of how the whole thing comes together using Gmail as the e-mail service:

<Example>

Your name: John Smith
Domain you registered: FTfan.com
Your Gmail id: [email protected]

<On your registrar account...i.e. namecheap>

Create an email alias as "[email protected]" forward it to [email protected]
Create an email alias as "[email protected]" forward it to the same address
Create an email alias as "[email protected]" forward it to the same

<On Gmail>

Set your "reply to" address as "[email protected]"

Now you can tell all your friends that your e-mail account is [email protected]
When using ebay, register as [email protected] (and remain anonymous)
On FT, register as [email protected] (ditto)

Mail addressed to any of these will show up in your Gmail box (or POP3)

If you start getting spammed on [email protected], just delete the account and create a new one [email protected]?

In any case, you can create your own permanent lifetime email address for about $11 a year. Create / delete up to 100 e-mail aliases. Set on up for your wife or kids @ FTfan and forward it to their hotmail/yahoo/whatever accounts. Also looks a bit more professional than the freebie accounts.

my $.02