Comments on: Never Use Hotmail Inactive Webmail as Your Secondary Email Account

By: pablovarela.myopenid.com/

pablovarela.myopenid.com/ — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:06:16 +0000

You would also have the same problem with your own domain if you forget to renew it.

Giving your email address in so many sites creates a problem if you lose it. I think it’s best to not have a lot of secondary addresses.

Another idea might be to have a cron job that keeps polling your email so your account doesn’t become inactive. Once a week would probably suffice.

By: Kent

Kent — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:18:57 +0000

Gmail provides an option to execute password recovery using text messages to your cellphone. However, it isn’t clear whether this is an OR or an AND with the secondary email address. I’ll give it a try soon and see how it works.

If you use your cellphone, it should be a bit safer than a secondary email account, and if it’s not, you know it’s someone with access to your phone (unless you can access your text messages over the web).

This is a very difficult problem, as the recovery mechanism should be more secure than the standard logon process.

By: Thibault

Thibault — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:23:16 +0000

Alternately you may use digsby and add all your web acounts in it.

This way you log every day with every mail account and you prevent the problem from arising.

By: Christopher Yeong

Christopher Yeong — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:42:58 +0000

Does using hotmail account as MSN ID count as keeping the hotmail account active?

I have a hotmail account I use primarily for IM, I just about never access the mail though.

By: Ted Avery

Ted Avery — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:20:46 +0000

Wow. Thanks for the tip, seriously! I have recovered my Gmail account once using Hotmail when my password unexpectedly was changed somehow, but I’ve just been lucky as I clear out the occasional e-mail every month or two. I’ll definitely be switching over that secondary e-mail setting.

By: Louis Zampini

Louis Zampini — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:18:19 +0000

Do you know if using Gmail’s Mail Fetcher to POP3 your Hotmail account keeps it active? If I view the history, it checks my Hotmail every hour. It never gets anything, but does that keep it active?