[hailer]

Hello and thanks to all your past replies. I think I am going to enjoy posting to this forum a lot in the future.

Anyway I have used my BB8700 for a few days now and I enjoy the freedom I get with it compared to my laptop. As a matter of fact I am on my first business trip without my laptop, in Vegas.

My long drawn out question is do you give out your personal BB address to people? I know spam is a headache with a BB or so I have read.

My personal BB address has been given out to a few clients and my parents when I got to thinking about this. I am self employed, so I don't use a company email server. In my line of business which is photography some of my clients become good friends too. So I think of my BB address as both a work and personal addy. Is this wrong? Am I setting myself up for a massive spam attack on my BB?

Should I keep my BB addy a secret and just use my free gmail account with the forwarding filter set?

How do the rest of you use your BB address?

[donsarlo]

My BB email address is in large circulation for over 4 years now, and I don't recall ever getting spam. I too do not use a corporate mail address or BES. I am on the Bell Mobility network in Canada

[jojitsu]

I use my bb for business and personal. My wife and kids send me messages on my bb address. My clients however get the business address which is pop'ed to my blackberry. It's been working well for 3 years. Also I set up all my family messages to Level 1.

[JerryD]

Just for a slightly different point of view....

The only thing I use my BB device email address for is for other email accounts to forward to. No one has my BB email address - not to prevent spam, but I have plenty of email addresses already.

And who knows, some day I might move to Good or (gasp!) Active Sync! Then how do I change my BB email address???

While there's certainly nothing WRONG with using it, I don't think that's really the intent behind the address. You're better off using something that will be around for a LONG time and accessible in many ways like Yahoo, Google, and Hotmail.

[Stinsonddog]

Wirelessly posted (8700c: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Interesting responses so far. I was thinking the vast majority keep it secret and use the gmail filtering or somehting like it.

[Berry One]

I deleted my blackberry email address as soon as I upgraded to BIS 2.0. I happened to use blackberry that allows BIS 2.0 tight Yahoo integration, and it so happened my personal email account is with Yahoo.

It was natural choice for me. I see no need for personal BB address. I have my Yahoo email instantly delivered to my blackberry.

[mrogers]

No one knows my BlackBerry address. I have a general philosophy -- which I think most people should follow, frankly -- never to use email addresses that are tied to a specific device or service. I never use the emails provided by my ISP, for example, because when I switch ISPs I lose that email address. I try to impart that wisdom to my less-technically-inclined friends and relatives, many of whom think you HAVE to use the Comcast email when you sign up for Comcast Internet, and then continue paying $40 a month down the road when they could switch to DSL for less than $20 just because they don't want to change their email address. If you use something like Yahoo or GMail, or best of all email with your own domain (which is what I use, and access via GMail Hosted), you never EVER have to change your email address. Not to mention that Yahoo and GMail are loads better than any email service from the ISPs or the BlackBerry email, for that matter.

So the major disadvatage to directly using your BlackBerry email address is that it leaves you inflexible. It also means you're screwed if any spammer gets ahold of that address. My recommendation is to just use the emails you already have and link them with your BlackBerry. Or, if you want to keep separate accounts, get an additional Yahoo or GMail account dedicated to use with your BlackBerry. They're free, so why not?

[cooperpwc]

I used to use my Blackberry address to emulate my Yahoo account through autoforwarding. Now with BIS 2.0 integration of Yahoo, I have my Blackberry address emulating my work account through autoforwarding.
No one gets my Blackberry address. In fact, I have a BIS filter that deletes all emails addressed To my Blackberry address since they can only be spam.