Solutions in this chapter:

• The advantages and drawbacks of Web-based e-mail
• An understanding of the architecture of Web-based e-mail
• How you become vulnerable when you use services such as Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Netscape
• An awareness of problems with Web-based e-mail
• Ways to secure access to Web-based e-mail

Introduction

You can not visit a search engine site without noticing an offer for a free mail account. Sites such as Yahoo! and Netscape offer free e-mail accounts to users in exchange for viewing advertisements. Most of these companies offer this service as a value add, which means that they entice you with this relatively inexpensive service, hoping to receive some sort of benefit from your visit.

This benefit might be the fact that they can:

• Generate profit by selling you another, related service.
• Increase their hit count, thus proving the site s popularity to advertising agencies. By showing that many people visit this site, they can then sell space on their Web page at a premium. Offering services such as Web-based e-mail tends to create return visitors, which, statistics show, usually implies the increased opportunity to sell something.
• Provide e-mail as part of an attempt to become an Internet portal, which is simply a site that purports to give easy access to all that the Internet offers. Because e-mail is so useful and popular, what better service could a portal offer than free e-mail?

Old clich s aside, if something is offered for free, then there is probably some sort of drawback involved; in...