Reminder: How to dump Gmail and move to Hotmail

If you have been disturbed about what Google has been doing behind the scenes and want to move from land of Google to Microsoft, we have a handy reminder on how to do that. We know that Google was not the only one spying on you behind your back but for a company whose motto is “Don’t be Evil”, it can certainly no longer be trusted.

We are well aware that there are many email services out there with Hotmail being just one of them. If Hotmail is not your cup of tea, Yahoo and Apple also offer viable alternatives for email.

But if you want to use Hotmail, it is relatively simple to port your email account to the service and the helpful video below gives step-by-step instructions for the process.

We know that porting your email is only a small step to defending your privacy, but Google (and the others who knowing used the exploits) monitored unauthorized browsing with nefarious intentions. If Google got caught spying here, what else could they be up too? Posted below are the full instructions from Microsoft on how to switch:

Create a Hotmail account. If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Hotmail account. The best way to do this is to get a new email address either @hotmail.com or @live.com. Or, if you already have an email address you want to keep using, you can keep using it and sign up here. You don’t have to use our domain.

Import your old messages from Gmail. You’ll probably want to keep your old email and contacts so we’ve made it simple to bring them in. TrueSwitch is an easy tool which will import your email and contacts and forward any new email to Hotmail for 90 days. Go to the TrueSwitch site and follow the steps there. When you sign back in to Hotmail, you’ll notice that it’s beginning to import your emails (this could take a few hours if you have a lot of emails to bring over).

Connect your Gmail account. This step is optional, but if you want to make sure you receive future messages from Gmail, you can have Hotmail automatically get all new emails that are sent to your old Gmail account. These are the steps to connect your accounts:

a. In your inbox, click Options and then More options.

b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts.

c. Click Add an email account.

d. Provide your Gmail account details

A lot of content comes through your inbox such as bank and mortgage statements that Google could be cataloging about you even if you thought you were browsing privately. While Microsoft could certainly do the same as Google, Google has proven that it will intentionally exploit holes in security features to further track your Internet usage. What else the search giant is doing behind the scenes is unknown but considering they are actively exploiting these security holes does open Pandora’s box for other unethical actions.