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     webmail

This page considers webmail, browser-based email that is independent of an ISP.

It covers -

• introduction
• basis
• concerns

     introduction

Webmail uses a web interface to allows people to write and read email using a web browser, often using a machine that is located in a cybercafe or that is otherwise different to their personal computer.

Webmail is offered by internet directories such as Yahoo!, networks (MSN's Hotmail), search engines (eg Google's GMail) and mail specialists (eg freemail.com.au, 30gigs.com, inbox.com and xasamail.com), often in conjunction with free personal web hosting.

That service is based on exposure to advertising (with users for example seeing banner ads when they sign-on and with each message).

As of 2000 it is likely that there were around 300 million such accounts across the globe, although many of those accounts were inactive - they had been abandoned by users - and many were held by the same people, with suggestions for example that the 'average' Yahoo! and Hotmail user has more than four accounts. In December 2006 Hotmail claimed some 270 million active accounts worldwide, with a billion emails supposedly being sent to Hotmail accounts each day. How many of those are spam?

By March 2007 comScore Media Metrix was claiming that Gmail had 51 million users worldwide, Microsoft's Live Mail/Hotmail had 228 million users and Yahoo had 250 million users.

     basis

In the 1990s some 'free internet' services offered access in exchange for provision by the user of personal information (sold to third parties as 'de-identified' aggregated demographics data or simply as mailing lists). That business model fizzled in the face of competition from less intrusive service providers and recognition that many users were supplying spoof data (the '100 year old female Albanian millionaire of Nowhere Street in Antarctica').

Many internet service providers (ISPs) offer remote access to a regular email account through a webmail gateway.

Webmail access has the advantage that it is independent of the person's machine: messages can be read/sent from wherever the person has access to a browser and internet connection and do not have to be downloaded to that person's laptop/desktop machine. Users however have to maintain an online connection to the webmail server, often encounter storage limits (a problem if sending/receiving graphic attachments) and slow speeds, and may be inhibited by poor editing tools.

Most webmail providers are seeking to attract and retain users by offering other services, in particular free file storage.

30gigs.com for example promotes itself as

an "All in one" site for the webmaster and avid computer users. Combining personal file storage, GD2 signatures and anonymous email all in one service, which would be free. Our main goal is to provide as much space as possible for today's webmail users where tons of storage space is needed.

     concerns

Webmail has been variously hailed as a tool for freedom: many services allow a high degree of anonymity in gaining a webmail account, physical access from different locations may impede surveillance activity, lack of cost and ease of registration means that users can treat it as a 'throwaway account'.

Conversely it has been assailed as a tool for spammers, terrorists, paedophiles and other criminals who will take advantage of those attributes. It has attracted criticism over potential datamining by service providers.

Critics have commented that because messages from web-mailaccounts do not pass through corporate email systems, US businesses could run face difficulties with federal legislation requiring them to archive corporate mail and provide that correspondence during commercial litigation or inquiry by government agencies. In practice businesses have little control over the life span of messages in employee webmail accounts, a concern given advice from corporate lawyers to delete messages from servers and individual machines after a certain period to inhibit legal discovery by litigants.

Security consultancy Proofpoint claimed in 2006 that 37% of US enterprises used software to monitor office use of webmail. The effectiveness of that monitoring is unclear. It appears that policies prohibiting use of webmail - for example forwarding messages to laptops and home machines for work away from the office - are often ignored by senior managers and line staff.

One perspective is provided by Grant Yang's 2005 DLTR paper Stop The Abuse of Gmail!, which offer a view of privacy issues and selective indignation.

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