How Often Do You Check Your Primary E-Mail Account?

[arwalden]

What's your percentage of spam to legitimate e-mail?

I admit that I used to check it (automatically) every 10 minutes. But it got to be OLD to hear the new-mail sound effect only to discover that it was more spam... AGAIN.

Now I only check for new email every week or so. It truly bugs my mother that I don't reply to her emails as though they were an "instant message"... but she'll have to get over it. (Sorry, Mom.) I figure that in the event of a family emergency, people can use the phone to reach me.

-- Allen

[DisgustipatedinCA]

1. Other: Every 1 Minute

OK, I'm a control freak.

I set up various .wav files to play depending on who is doing the sending. That way, I don't get the annoying ding when spam comes in. If I hear a noise, I know it's a friend.

[VOX]

2. Sometimes I feel like a lab rat going for the cheese...

Only to get the puff of air, or mild electric current, or whatever. Metaphorically speaking, of course. But I'm very dependent on e-mail.

Right now, my spam outweighs my legit mail by about 3 to 1. Even using the Outlook filters, spammers find a way to get in, like changing "viagra" to "vi@gra" pr "v1agra," etc.

[SOteric]

3. A few times a day is actually 2, maybe 3 times a day

and 3 is if I'm waiting for something or have some reason to believe I might be receiving mail I haven't seen come in yet.

Of course, I can be just as needy as the next person; I check my e-mail about every 10 minutes on my birthday or when their might be congratulations of some sort.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

4. Other, it comes in continiously

I don't check it, per se.

[scarlet_owl]

5. Once a day

I don't get much mail. I guess I don't know many people.

[Maeve]

6. If I let it go for more than 36 hours or so

The bulk message folder would overwhelm the planet! Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam spam, spam.....

But I also subscribe to a couple of e-lists and so have interesting things that I really CARE about show up on a regular basis. So I check several times a day.

[starroute]

7. I put 15 minutes, but that's kind of misleading

I have my spam filter set to check every 10 minutes and change the icon in the system tray if it finds something. If it weren't for that, I suppose I'd check every 2-3 hours.

I don't get a lot of non-spam email, but what I do get contains a fairly high percentage of same-day stuff (like my son at college saying, *The financial aid office needs a yes or no answer on this by tomorrow, what should I tell them?*), so I don't feel I can let things go.

[xJlM]

8. At least once a day

But all I get there is ZeppNews and a few other political newsletters. I don't even get spammed there much (and if I do, it only happens once), but then I never give that address to anyone, anyway. Now, my Yahoo mail is spam city. Sometimes I let it go for a day or two, and I'll end up with 98 messages in the Bulk Mail folder. They've had the red light flashing before, to let me know I was at the last two percent of my 6 mbs. That's where I get all those warnings from Microsoft about how I need to download their patch, which is really funny because I have never registered a Microsoft product and I'm running Linux anyway.

[Booberdawg]

9. My primary account is open all day

So I see the mail as soon as it arrives if I'm in the house. I have a siren noise screwed into my mail account. My mail runs about half and half for spam and real live mail from family or friends.

[newyawker99]

10. I check it once per day.

I don't receive much email so I can get away with checking it once in the morning.

[youngred]

11. Spam to real emails

4 or 5 to 1

[chenGOD]

12. About twice a day....

For people coplaining about spam: Thunderbird is an excellent mail client with excellent junk mail controls that are able to be trained (sounds weird I know, you have to see it). I get no false positives after making a few filters. thunderbird

[Spirochete]

13. I get mostly spam

I used to get a lot of penis enlargement and cell phone spam. Lately though, it seems to be predominantly vicodin spam.