This Help Page is for those who do not have a 
"permanent / portable email address":

Why do I need a permanent email address?

• Portability -  No need to give out change-of-address notifications to your contacts and friends if you change Internet Service Providers.  Works with AOL or networked email systems too.  Forward-able, portable email addresses stay with you even when you change ISPs with a simple 1 minute on-line address change.  LHHS reunion coordinators lose 10-15% of their email database every 3 months due to email changes, you can help by getting a permanent one. 
• Convenience -  Easy to remember, easy to type names (that you get to pick) helps both you and your friends and can save everybody grief.  It can save frustration and wasted time on wrong email addresses and divulging info to strangers.  Help out your Reunion People-Finder Team by giving them an address that you will still have a few years from now.
• Anonyminity -  You can keep your other/primary email address private and avoid it being picked up by junk mail scavaging robots.  Usually your user name is the first part of your email address with your ISP, you can keep this user name private.
• Travel -  When traveling, you can use any browser anywhere in the world to check your email and reply to messages.  Although there are special interfaces (such as thatweb.com & mailstart.com) that allow you to check most POP email accounts from a browser, these are not as reliable as a true browser based email system.

How do I choose a portable email service?

• The most versatile types are the several free email services that are Forward-able and/or checkable through you regular email software (such as Outlook or Netscape).  Forward-able means that you can set it up to auto-forward to your POP email account or AOL account.  This allows you to give one email address to everybody and receive them at the account of your choice (POP account or browser account). You can also disable the forwarding in 1 minute and start reading any new mail from within your browser at the email service.  You choose, and you can switch freely.

Who do you recommend?

• Yahoo.com -  Our Editor's choice (your-name@yahoo..com) is the only free major "forward-able" featured email of the group, but is very well established and otherwise full featured.  Yahoo can also be checked from Outlook or Netscape, etc using typical POP email methods. Yahoo requires you to sign up for regular (at least once/week) promotional emailings to use the forwarding feature. They have many extra features that are free (such as anti-virus, anti-spam, and instant messaging) and allows more storage space than Hotmail.
• Hotmail.com -  Our second choice (your-name@hotmail.com) is NOT FORWARDABLE, however it is very popular and well known due to Microsoft marketing.  It has recently begun to allow you to check mail through a special feature if you use Outlook as your email software. Except for it's lack of forwarding, Hotmail is as full featured as Yahoo, both with many bells and whistles, such as anti-virus, anti-spam, and instant messaging.
• Mail.com -  Our third choice mail.com (your-name@mail.com) is no longer forwardable for free, but can be set up for $20/year.  It has a great name and excels at giving you a myriad of other domain name choices to match with your user name [ie. your-name@  email.com, usa.com, engineer.com, yours.com and other variations of locations (europe.com), professions (doctor.com), and expressions (cheerful.com)].
  
  These are all free, no obligation, and well established services. They promise not to sell your name to email or  snail-mail lists, however they reserve the right to send you their own promotional email directly (which is how they pay for the service).  You have to answer name, address, and demographic questions for their marketing purposes.
   
• MailBank.com -  For $9.95/year (+$19.95 setup), you can have an advertisement-free portable, forward-able email account (POP only, not browser-based).  They offer names similar to mail.com's selection, but have many more choices.  They also have a large selection of Last Names to choose from, such as James@Smith.net (your-name@Smith.net).  Matching sub-domain names for websites can be rented for an additional $19.95/year, such as James.Smith.net that allow you to have a 5 MB web space.  LHHS.Wildcats.org has been hosted there since July, 1998 and gets a matching email address LHHS@ Wildcats.org.

Do you have suggestions for free email services that might be of help?  
Please give us your input.  

Comments or Suggestions about this website: E-mail Here