I might be behind in the terminology, because i'm referring to the original usage and explanation. Yes the private key would encrypt and the public key would decrypt anything signed that way. That's known (unless I'm wrong) as digital signing. If public keys are available and Yahoo/Google pick them up as they are being transferred in emails, it can be made to do it automatically; But only that step. Optionally public keys could be provided along with all the emails (I've seen PGP keys following emails).

Ya that is what I am saying, in encryption its backwards.
Public Keys encrypt and private keys decrypt.

But backwards doesn't make it less effective. You can't use a public key to decrypt/sign something, only goes one way.

Oh well...

Certificates and encryption just use similar terminology - though they use certificates and not keys.
Which makes spam encryption very unlikely unlss you kept your public key in a open key database.

Some users do such as journalists
But it would be really time consuming for a bot to find a key for every user and then encrypt then send.
Its much easier to find a mail service which only checks for spam after a specific volume has been reached.

I can highly recommend Protonmail, it's free, currently under active development, and privacy orientated.

Because I'm paranoid, but don't believe there is such a thing as privacy online anyway, I just use GMail. All hail the overlord!

I use hotmail because it reminds me of times when internet was this new hot thing, and lots of sites would have the word "hot" in it, like hotmail.com, hotdate.com, hotporn.com, hothot.com, hothothot.com etc.

MS owns Hotmail nowadays, and it seems they are renaming the service once in a while. At some point it was live.com (or live.fi), nowadays apparently outlook.com, etc. But since I got my email address back when it was simply hotmail.com, that's the account I have. It works fine.

What I especially like about it is that Microsoft's anti-spam features seem to work great, I haven't received any spam mail for years even though I've been spreading the email address around freely. Once in a while some legit email might have been marked as spam though, so once in a while I need to check the Trashcan to see if there are any mails there I want to salvage. Other than that, it is pretty good. Well, maybe the UI could still be better.

Ha! My first e-mail was on a Hotmail account (this would have been around the turn of the millennium). I wonder if my old login still works?

Gmail: Because you can choose a very strong and lengthy password for your account, plus additional security options. Good features and customization.

Since the beginning of Gmail (when it needs invitation), I use it. And I never returned to other services.

Go Outlook.

They also have a sweep feature, an easy way to delete tons of emails from that newsletter that you probably don't read. That and the interface is looking good. I'd go full Outlook myself if I wasn't so deep into Gmail.

I don't see anyone mentioning it, but I think GMX is pretty cool too. My first choice is gmail, if you don't mind the big G, but GMX is pretty cool and if I wasn't so lazy (I have had my gmail accs for a looong time now), GMX would step up in that list most likely.

Isn't that the German one? Vaguely remember looming at it a few years back, but there was a whole.load oc trouble with accounts being locked and system downs, with ko support. Not sure if that has changed, but I would be careful. As yahoo, last time l looked was covered in advertising so couldn't see anything (only had it for an hour though), and outlook.com just doesn't work, that really only leaves gmail, just make sure to logout each time (otherwise all the google sites track), and don't send anything confidential/incriminating :o)

Thanks for all the opinions guys. I knew I could count on this community to help out. I don't really need the encryption stuff. My emails are innocent enough where that wouldn't be a problem. Just need a reliable service with strong spam filtering and maybe virus detection(in case I forget to check that attachment myself).

I've always used Yahoo mail. Never had a problem with it.