I have combined several private email addresses into one Google Account. I have grown tired of installing and switching between Thunderbird, Mac Mail, and The Bat!. When all I want is a mail program that works like Gmail. Gmail has everything I want in a mail client. The Bat! is very close, but it has no Anti-Spam features. I get about 8000+ spam each month! Gmail misses about 60 of these each month.
In addition to Gmail, I’m using Google Calendar. The best part is I no longer need Agendus & Chatter for my Palm Treo 650. I simply connect to the web and view both mail & calendar. Another added benefit using Gmail and Google Calendar negates syncing my phone and my workstation. Syncing is always a hassle and requires $30+.
Sure now Google has all my personal information, but even with a private email server, local email client your information is not secure. Your private email could be secure if you always use an encrypted connection to your email server AND your server is secure AND you take steps to encrypt your email using some sort of Public Key Encryption. That last bit is nearly impossible to accomplish in our PGP-what? society. All it takes is one mistaken unecrypted email to perk Someone’s interest. Then said Person can use their Trillion Dollar super computer array to decrypt your entire email archive.
Note: despite your local privacy laws I would bet the NSA has an ear on your current ISP. Why wouldn’t they, its so easy to tap into that bit stream. Then run the output through a complicated set of algorithms to filter deviant (to the current society’s) behaviors. I don’t really mind these actions. So even if your have your own private mail server not hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc. odds are the NSA and/or Big Brother have a record of everything you have ever done on the Internet, which his includes email, websites, downloads, etc.
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