Free email services are very popular and rightfully so.
They're easy to set up, accessible almost anywhere you have
an internet connection, and best of all they're free!
Unfortunately putting all your eggs into this particular
basket can be a frustrating recipe for eventual disaster.

Surprisingly it's not that uncommon not only for individuals,
but even for some businesses to use obviously free email
services as their primary or only means of contact.

It's a huge mistake.

Remember the old adage: "you get what you pay for."

The issue turns out to be a frighteningly simple one: if you
lost your email account and everything in it would you be
able to get it back? In most cases when it comes to free
email services the answer is a resounding
no.

The most common scenario is simple password loss through
theft. Someone gets into your account and deletes all of
your email and contacts. You might login one day to an empty
account - if you can log in at all. There are many other
reasons that you might lose access to your account, and
while they might be less common the results are the same:
everything is gone.

The normal approach when this happens is to contact customer
service and have them restore your account. There are two
problems with this line of reasoning: finding that customer
service, and proving that you're the rightful owner of the
account.

Most of the popular free email services have limited
customer service resources at best. Your chances of actually
reaching someone who can help you are often quite slim.
Those that do offer support typically do so via email or web
forms only, so you'll need a second email account somewhere
in order to be able to interact with them. And any response
or aid most certainly won't be fast.

If you're like many folks you hesitate to put your actual
personal information into your free email profile - often a
very sensible privacy precaution. If you're like even more
people you may never have bothered to set up an alternate
email address or a secret question and answer that you might
use to prove that you are who you say you are. Even if you
have set up the appropriate information a savvy account
thief will have changed it almost immediately. If you are
able to get assistance you may not be able to actually prove
that you are the account's rightful owner.

The result is simple regardless of how it happened or what
path you take: everything in your free email account is
gone.

If you're thinking "it can't happen to me", rest assured it
happens much more often than you might think.

So what's the solution?

There are two:

One: spring for a paid email account with a reputable
provider that offers real time telephone support. The most
common source for this might well be your own ISP, though
there are plenty of providers. The good news here is that it
doesn't need to be expensive.

Two: Take responsibility for backing up your free email
account. The best way to do this is to access your free
email account using a POP3/SMTP email client like Outlook
Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail and many
others. Using a PC-based email client ensures that all your
data - both email and address book - is always on your own
computer where you can and should regularly back it up
yourself. No matter what happens to the free service
everything is preserved on your machine. Not all free
services support POP3/SMTP, but there are approaches to
accessing the most popular services this way.

Free email accounts most definitely have a place in your
overall strategy - they're perfect as "throw away" accounts
for example. But as soon as you consider what you're doing
with your free email account "important", then it's time to
take steps to make sure that you're appropriately covered
should something happen to that account.

It's more likely than you think.