GMX junk e-mail providers - Germany

time for a little rant before bed. about something german...

Is anyone else fed up with GMX Email? ("german mail exchange" - the free german email provider)

First you have to log in with your FULL email address - which you never have to do with Yahoo and co.

And everytime after you have logged in they ask you to click on buttons to verify if your "personal details" have changed (meaning your "interests", so they can adjust the spam advertising crap they mail to you and the pop ups that appear when you log in). You only have two options for this: "update now" or "remind me again later". The thought that I maybe dont want to be reminded again later doesnt or rather won`t occur to them. Very rude.

Then when you`ve got past all that you are accosted by these extremely irritating dancing advertisments all round the sides of the webpages - and which you can`t even switch off or click at to go away and lose themselves.

GMX send you loads of spam crap themselves. And not only that. Ive had porn ads displayed next to my emails as well. And no, I dont think thats funny - not when Im in a business environment and checking my business email.

I really think this email provider is the pits.

OK, yes I do use Yahoo as well. But the GMX account Ive had for several years now and need it for my work, so not so easy to switch. When I first discovered it, the service was reasonable.

But the irritants mentioned above seem to be getting worse and making it almost intolerable to use! GMX is becoming a very unpleasant site to use. Plus all the "content" schnick-schnack" - most of which is sheer eye-candy junk of the worst kind. Anyone else feel the same way about GMX?

Sometimes though I think the whole internet is eventually just going to flush itself down the pan in a great steaming pile of spam, viruses, dancing advertisment graphics, popups and sundry trash.

We need to return to a non-commercial internet - some hopes - or at least - create some kind of alternative internet. With an alternative search engine. Not google. Alternative, usable email, which doesnt come with all this junk. And free of viruses and spam..

Oh well, carry on dreaming. Time for bed said Zebbede..

That's what you get for being a cheap-skate

The advertising is what pays for the servers, electricity, staff, etc they require to provide you with the service.

You don't have to use their online interface, you can pull the mails from the server with an offline mailer (I use Thunderbird myself, but Outlook, etc do the job too ). Then you can list the advertising mails as spam (very easy with Thunderbird), and you won't be bothered by them at all.

Conversely, you could decide to pay a moderate fee to use their "Pro-Mail" service, then you don't have to contend with any ads at all.

Now my rant:

Why do so many people think that commercial companies operatiing in the media (TV, Internet, Print) should dispense with ads?

They pay for the service after all. Without the ads, you'd only have the BBC, or ARD/ZDF to watch. You'd have to pay a lot more for your daily paper, magazines, if they didn't carry any ads. So why do you expect the internet be any different?

You just have to realise that you don't get any service for free. That's the way the world is.

Hey Rick,

GMX is not so bad - you only need to be one step ahead of them all the time.

You can actually log in using your Kundennummer (!)
As Mike suggests, use Outlook or Thunderbird & POP3 for the service, and then you never really have to log into their home page.

In the Einstellungen, if you Klick on the "I'm interested in Erotic Advertisments" box, you get what you asked for - nudge nudge!

Agreed. The weapon against that... Automatic mail diversion to my web.de account for all emails with the address "mailing@gmx.net" or similar. My web.de account has the instructions to refuse this address... problem solved

I agree with you in principle that GMX hase gone down the toilet, but I have kept my address there because a few years ago they had gmx.co.uk email addresses. They don't offter them anymore, but the active addresses remain active. It can be quite handy...

Thats a good idea. Altho I use Linux not Windows and so dont use Outlook. But maybe I can config my netscape mail to connect to gmx.

Re alternatives to google. Theres an open source project on right now to develop a search engine which will search the web using surplus processor capacity of PCs around the world, linked together in a global grid. Good idea. The problem with google is that they are currently in what is practically a monopoly position.
And increasingly the answers you get from google are simply the result of paid placings by companies.

I've got no problem with GMX. I use it free and have also switched off all X-rated advertising. The rest can be ignored. Most mails, not many mind you, sent by them land in my Outlook bin automatically - I check the bin, before deleting all mails regularly for the Spam mailbox E-mail. I don't need the extras, so I don't pay.

Rerouting your mails means you won't get the Spam mailbox warning. I found mails from friends and customers in the GMX Spam mailbox!

The fact that they force you to change your details, and bug you when you don't log out, is a security issue which forces you to take care - amongst other things. It annoys me too, but it is worth the effort.

My websites cost money and time to run as well. I wish I had advertising to cover costs!

New life for an old thread. GMX are still pretty crap.

On a German friend's recommendation I have signed up for their service and pay them 2 euro a month, I think, for the priviledge. On paper it's a pretty good service and I figured by paying for it I'd get something that works just that bit better than the free stuff, and I'd hoped my emails would get through corporate spam filters. Now I'm sure (I'm hoping) someone will tell me I can do better for less.

For a start the GMX email servers are often broken, reporting weird internal errors when sending a mail and a helpful 'please try again later' message. Error reports in English are spat back without them so much as trying. I hadn't heard 'Wir sind in Deutschland, wir muessen auf Deutsch sprechen' for a while before that one. Error reports in my best German are acted on slowly with things often getting worse before they get better. GMX also have this stupid message that comes up every time I log in that says I have 'leider uebersehen' to log out and I must do this to keep my email secure. Why do I have to do this when my computer is in my flat?

All in all I'm at my limit of how much shit I can tolerate for a service I pay for - any suggestions? All I need is reliable email and a few Gb of web space with minimal bandwidth.

i've been using web.de for 5 years now. just the free service, but there are lots of upgrades for a small monthly fee. i cannot complain, but i'm also no expert.

GoDaddy have a good email system for $20 a year, with 1Gb of storage.

I can also recommend web.de. the free service comes with ads, but they are pretty discreet, or you can pay
5 euros a month and get unlimited disk space and all incoming email is virus checked.

An update on how useless GMX are - I still can't click on 'antworten' in an email and then 'absenden' to send a mail. Doing this brings up an 'invalid address in the 'to' field' message, which GMX fill in - I can edit it to correct the screw up but that's not the point. This is a fairly basic function for an email system so I'm wondering how on earth they can cock it up. It's also been 24 hours since I reported the error with no feedback at all.

All in all, don't bother with GMX, they're crap even if you pay for the service. Thanks for the suggestions about their competition.

I don't have any problems with gmx - I've have had a free address with them for a couple years now. Are you using a mail client or working on the web interface? And they catch lots of spam and separate it from downloading - I just get a summary of what wasn't downloaded and why.

web.de isn't the competition anymore actually. It's the same company.

I'm using their web interface through the Opera browser. I guess GMX can work with another client, what's the current favourite alternative email client for XP? My computer has MS LookOut installed but I don't want to use that if I can avoid it.

I use GMX the free product, but via POP and SMTP so I dont really get exposed to their ads, nor have ads attached to my signature. The product advertisements they send you in the email, I can screen out with my anti-spam.

@HellesAngel Try mozilla thunderbird.

Try using an email client such as Thunderbird and setup up "SPAM Filters"

I had setup a spam filter for "GMX" ..

all emails from mailings@gmx.net ( the id for sending offers) .. go directly to my trash can