What does your ISP say about you? | Hacker News Reader

What does your ISP say about you?

blog.mailchimp.com

56 pointsmistermcgruff20 comments

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.

[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).

Not sure about that.

People tend to stick with an email address - after they sign up, it is a lot of effort to change it. They need to re-register for things, etc.

I'd say the primary component is, how did they sign up for their first email address. If you used the internet in 1998, you probably used comcast or AOL, and were offered an email address during signup.

A lot of young people switch between school or college addresses as their 'work email'. Home use of the net is likely to be via a mobile phone a lot of the time, and they will choose an account with a nice iphone / android ap.

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.

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.

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...

Yep, my ISP says that Comcast was sadly my only option.

Well then take heart. A recent BI article (here on HN somewhere) says that cable is losing both TV subscribers and internet subscribers, and speculates that Comcast and TW could merge one day. I hear TW is loved at least as much as Comcast.

Relevant Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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?

> How does this not trigger any flags for monopoly abuse at the DoJ?

For starters, Microsoft does not have a monopoly on game consoles.

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

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

> why has no one called them on this bullshit?

because you are not required to have a hotmail account. I've signed up for live with my gmail account.

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

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