The Juggle Zone: Bargain Blog

Many years ago I signed up for a "free for life" forwarding address from a company called iName.com. They have since been bought by mail.com.

The forwarding address was convenient - it was easy to remember, and would forward to wherever my real email address actually existed. When I changed email providers, I didn't have to notify anyone.

A couple years ago, they alerted me that they wouldn't be able to provide free forwarding anymore - either pay or be switched to a web-mail account. I wasn't willing to pay, so eventually they switched me to the web-mail account.

It wasn't very convenient, and I hated their interface because it was slow and ad-laden. I started switching to alternate email addresses, and avoiding the account. However, I do occasionally get email there, so I try to check every now and then. They even began to offer a free program, "Mail.com Alert," which hangs out in the taskbar and pops up when new mail arrives. This allowed me to only need to check when ... new mail arrived!

Over the last few months, the amount of spam has gone from a lot to tons. I get many pieces each day, compared to virtually none at most of my other accounts (many of my email providers actively apply various technologies to remove/prevent spam). This led me to wonder why.

I came to the conclusion that in their business model of advertising based revenue, it is actually to their benefit to allow, or even support, spam. The more spam, the more email I think I have, the more times I log in, the more ads they get to show, the more money they make!