This is annoying. Yahoo Mail’s spam filter for one sucks big time. While I maintain a Yahoo account just for the sake of having Flickr, my Yahoo! Mail inbox get’s spammed a lot and the spam filter won’t adapt to the stuff I teach it.

But there are other obnoxious systems out there like Hotmail, Germany’s popular Web.de or T-Online Mail… you name them.

Best solution: use Gmail - AND you can still keep the old address!

So hop over to http://www.google.com/mail, get an account there, have your old mail system’s mailbox and contacts migrated using the “import mail and contacts” option in the “Accounts and Import” settings section. Next go to the “Send mail as…” area in “Accounts and Import” and change the sender mail address to the old email address.

Last but not least, put a mail forward in your old mailbox system’s account so that anything coming in is forwarded straight to Gmail.

Best thing: Google Mail offers every “professional” feature for free others will charge you for. And with the tons of targeted advertising at Yahoo! Mail’s web mail client I am not sure if Google after all might be even the saver alternative as they all seem to “hand out” personal information in one or the other way (ever noticed how close ads are to the content of your mails…)!