
What does your ISP say about you? - mistermcgruff
http://blog.mailchimp.com/what-does-your-isp-say-about-you/
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pedantry
Last time I checked, ISP does not equal e-mail domain. If I recall correctly,
ISP has a specific meaning: "Internet Service Provider."

For example, AOL and Comcast are ISPs, but gmail, hotmail and yahoo are not.

Maybe you receive an allocation of e-mail addresses when you sign up for
internet service, but that doesn't mean that the domain of the e-mail address
represents internet service.

I think what we're seeing here is that the higher age of comcast users is an
expression of the fact that those are the people who own the homes (have their
name on the mortgage and deed of the property) or sign the lease and pay the
rent, and thus also are more likely to pay the broadband bills, and are more
likely to use the ISP e-mail address, since they're the ones looking at the
features their ISP provides as part of the internet package they sign up for.

Meanwhile, the kids don't pay the bills, and are probably suspicious about
whether their parents can call the ISP and demand the password, to snoop on
their mail, and thus tend to avoid the ISP domains.

~~~
kijin
[Edit] That's a good distinction. I would have preferred a more detailed
comparison between freemail users on the one hand, and ISP email users on the
other, including all the major ISPs in North America. I wonder how the Comcast
clientele compares with those of AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, as well as
Canadian monopolies like Bell and Rogers.

The stark difference between the freemail demographic and ISP email users are
probably also due to:

1) You should intend to live in the same place for a long time if you use your
ISP's email address. Because if you move to a state where your current ISP
doesn't have a monopoly, you might not be able to keep that email address.

2) Using an email address at your ISP is decidedly uncool among the young.
What good is an email address that can't sign you into Xbox Live or YouTube?
Some ISPs have deals with the Big Three, but a lot of the rest still slap
SquirrelMail on top of a vanilla POP3/IMAP/SMTP setup and call it a day.

3) Many old people simply don't think of email as anything other than what
their ISP set them up with. Webmail is a foreign concept to them. These are
the folks who equate "Internet" with the blue "e" icon and "email" with
Outlook Express. Using the Internet to read email would sound to them just as
nonsensical as using a bicycle to mow the lawn.

I'm not sure about the home ownership factor because you can easily subscribe
to cable even if you rent. You might not want to get the expensive package
with all the channels, but a basic plan that includes "high speed internet" is
as essential nowadays as water and electricity (even though it is slowly being
replaced by mobile data plans).

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ambirex
Nice write up about the different demographics on mail providers. But I'm not
sure that "ISP" is the correct term for the title.

I always considered which ISP you use has more to do with picking the least
horrible option for your geography.

~~~
kps
Ah well, my primary personal email address is still at my ISP, which, in
addition to telling you my location (and the least horrible option here),
tells you that I've had it since the time it was normal for ISPs to provide
email (and Usenet, and a couple megabytes web space).

My _previous_ email address contained at least one ‘!’, which, if you
recognize it, tells you that we should meet up on my front porch to tell the
damn kids to get off our lawns.

I'm slowly moving to a personal domain, which says some more.

The ‘big guys’ I use only for forum registrations, shopping, and similar
throwaways.

~~~
X-Istence
Comcast still provides email addresses to everyone. I don't use it though,
since next thing I know I move across the country and lose that email address,
not my idea of fun is trying to gain access to various websites...

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dlsym
Relevant Oatmeal:
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address)

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snake_plissken
Umm what is AOL Explorer? Is that like the original AOL browser jawn that was
a window inside a second sand-boxed window that was virtually impossible to
use? I didn't know it had a name.

~~~
dublinben
I believe it was. It was based on the Trident engine, so it was effectively a
skin for Internet Explorer.

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zwieback
It would be interesting to see if you can tease out throwaway email accounts
(Gmail, in my case) from primary personal accounts and work accounts. I guess
the throwaways might actually be more interesting since that's what people
probably use for online purchases or registering for websites.

Also, I wish I could have maintained my first email at delphi.com but at the
time they didn't allow holding on to your email when you stopped paying for
the ISP.

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jorgem
I didn't understand how they got the "age" of users for different email hosts.

~~~
smackfu
Mailchimp client sites capture people's birthday on their signup form for
their mailchimp emails, usually to send automatic birthday wish emails.
Mailchimp used that data for analytics.

[http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-birthday-field-for-signup-
form...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-birthday-field-for-signup-forms/)

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npsimons
_Furthermore, in order to nab an Xbox Live account these days, Microsoft
requires you register using a Microsoft-owned freemail platform (Outlook,
Live, or you guessed it, Hotmail)._

Is this true? How does this not trigger any flags for monopoly abuse at the
DoJ? Oh, I forgot, MS is savvy about lobbying now.

Seriously, why has no one called them on this bullshit? Why do people put up
with it?

~~~
smackfu
I'm not sure what the basis for that statement is. You need to have a
"Microsoft account" (which used to be Windows Live ID). I'm sure that can also
be used to login to their web mail platform, but that seems pretty much the
same as Google or Apple or any other provider that uses a unified ID.

I mean, here's the signup page, which pretty clearly lets you provide your own
email address or choose to use a new Microsoft one:
[https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx](https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx)

~~~
arethuza
Exactly, my Microsoft Xbox Live account is linked to my Gmail account and this
hasn't caused any problems.

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alextingle
What does a ...@mailinator.com address say about you then?

