Safe E-mail provider for kids/teens? No spam, etc.

[HeidiKC]

Ugh. I got ds12 his first e-mail account a month or so ago, using yahoo. Mainly so I could forward Boy Scout e-mail to him, which is pretty much the only thing he's used it for. Tonight I was trying to find an e-mail I'd forwarded, and I noticd that the spam folder had 84 e-mails in it. I looked in there - YIKES. All sorts of yucky inappropriate stuff. Luckily he hadn't noticed it, but it makes me sick to think if he had.

 

So I guess there is no way to block that kind of spam on free e-mail accounts? If I got him an account like ours, maybe that would work - I don't normally get nasty spam like that. But I wondered if there is a good provider out there people use that blocks this kind of stuff. I know some of them let parents control lists of who can send him e-mail. Not sure I want to do that - seems like he'd miss a lot of e-mails people would want to send him. But maybe it is set up asking me to approve them? I don't want to get him a little kid account (son@kiddiemail.com) since I want him to have it throughout high school. So maybe something geared towards teens, or at least one that doesn't sound like a little kid account name.

 

Thanks! This was kind of a shock to me!

[Manamana]

I haven't used either of these services but saw them referred to on mobicip.com which is a kid-friendly browser for iPod touch and iPads. These two email options are mentioned as kid-friendly:

 

http://Www.zoobah.com

http://Www.Zilladog.com

[Laura Corin]

Have you checked your Yahoo settings? You may well be able to have the Spam delete instantly rather than being stored.

 

Laura

[happypamama]

I use multiple gmail.com addresses myself. One gets a lot of spam (that gmail catches), but it's the one I use for Facebook, signing up for things, etc. The other gets no spam; I only give it to a few people, never for mailing lists (other than our homeschool ones). I got my 10yo DD a gmail account a month ago, and so far, she's gotten no spam at it. I have it set so that one of my addresses receives a copy of anything she gets, and she's never allowed to use her address to sign up for anything, but so far, we've been pleased. IDK if that will work for teens, though, but I have been pretty happy with gmail's spam catching service.

[J-rap]

My kids (who are older) all use gmail and it seems quite good.

[Cinder]

I feel your pain WRT yahoo. I still have a yahoo account from way long ago (before gmail started) that I opened when I joined a few yahoo groups. It gets a lot of spam. It's pretty good about sending it to the spam file but occasionally one gets through or a "real" email gets thrown in there. But still--that spam box has some pretty racy stuff sometimes.

 

Dh and my 2 ds's have gmail--it's worked better for them than my yahoo acct works for me. They also limit who has their email addy--mainly school or church folks.

[Tasia]

I had problems like that with yahoo a few years ago, but haven't had any similar problems with gmail. My two oldest use gmail as well and have only gotten a few junk e-mails from fake banks.

[Word Nerd]

My DD has a MouseMail account. I have to approve everything that comes to her, or I can add the sender to her Contacts list for automatic approval.

[Mom-ninja.]

Taking notes