How do they make money (was: free email a/c allowing download)

[mdevin@ozemail.com.au]

On Sun, May 27, 2001 at 10:28:46AM -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Sun, May 27, 2001 at 08:53:05AM -0500, ktb wrote:
> > On Sun, May 27, 2001 at 11:47:22PM +1000, mdevin@ozemail.com.au wrote:
> > > Is there any free mail accounts (like hotmail etc.) that allow you to
> > > download your mail so that you can read it with mutt say?  Instead of
> > > having to view it through the web browser when connected to the
> > > internet.
> 
> > How about doing it the other way around, access your isp's email account 
> > with a free email account?
> 
> There are lots of reasons why this is, IMO, a less desirable solution, mostly
> centering around the basic notion that, if the mail is on your machine, you
> can access and filter it however you want instead of being tied to whatever
> piece of drek interface the mail service provider gives you.  In this
> particular case, I suspect (based on the "when connected to the internet"
> comment above) that mdevin is on a dialup link and doesn't want to have to
> bring the link up and tie up a phone line while reading mail over that slow
> link.

Yep, that is exactly right.  I have a p90 with only 16Mb ram and a
slow 28.8 pcmcia modem.  Needless to say it doesn't run Netscape well
and I find lynx shows pages differently.  Also, where I work, there is
only 1 phone line and I am on call.  So I can't tie it up.

What I do at present is connect, use fetchmail -> procmail -> mutt,
then disconnect.  I need only a couple of mins to download everything
especially since I put limit 50000 in my fetchmailrc to prevent
downloading messages with large attachments.

Thanks for all the replies.  When I get home I will check some of them
out.

One thing I don't understand though is: How do these free accounts
that do provide pop3 access make money?  I can understand that they
can make money with advertising when you have to view your mail
through a web browser, but how if you download messages to your home
computer?  Do they add advertisement headers to your mail or something
bad like that?