One alternative is to signup for a Yahoo e-mail address. They actually support three forms: free edition, custom edition, and business edition. The free edition should be enough for most people. You will have an email address like donsingleton@yahoo.com. If you actually have your own domain name, the second form might make sense, but if so, I would not recommend that you pay Yahoo $35 a year to register your domain name. I would suggest you go to some registrar like InexpensiveDomains (the one I use) and register a domain name for $15 a year.

I am not absolutely certain, but if one already has their domain name registered (for example, through InexpensiveDomains), then it appears Yahoo just charges $10/year for personal e-mail services (five e-mail addresses). As long as you authorize Yahoo to send you a few spam messages, you can have them automatically forward e-mail messages to your ISP-provided e-mail address or you can have them provide you with POP3/SMTP access so that you can have your e-mail program automatically get and send e-mail through Yahoo Mail.

This is not your only alternative. If you use InexpensiveDomains to register your domain name, then for $14.95 per year they will provide domain name and e-mail forwarding. This means that you can attach your domain name to any website, even some of the free ones which don't support personal domain names, and you can have your email forwarded to any e-mail address you want.

Either of these could be the behind-the-scenes way I have don@donsingleton.com as my e-mail address. Actually I use a third alternative. VirtualAve/Hypermart offers a series of Web hosting packages, including one for free, as long as you are willing to have a banner ad on your Web page. I don't know how much longer they will offer this, because this page does not show the free hosting alternative, except as a link at the bottom of the page. But if you sign up for a free Web site, you can point your domain name to it, and make use of their free e-mail forwarding to send e-mail to your ISP-provided e-mail address.

Actually there is one other alternative I can recommend. Webstrike Solutions provides Web hosting which just costs $30 for the first year (they say it is free for the first year, but there is a $30 setup cost), and then $84 a year thereafter. You can attach your own domain name to your account, and they have a free e-mail forwarding service which can forward e-mail from the domain name to your ISP-provided e-mail account.

Regardless of which of these alternatives you use, you will have an account to which people can send e-mail, and it will be forwarded to the account your ISP provides. Then if your ISP changes your e-mail address, or if you change ISPs, all you have to do is go online, and access your Yahoo or whichever account, and change the address it forwards your e-mail to. The people you e-mail will never know your real e-mail account changed.