[Klathmon]

Use your own domain at the very least. Preferrably one that is your legal name so that if anyone ever tries to take it (either from just buying it if it lapses, or just attacking it/you) you have some legal protection in the US from the ACPA.

Then it's just a matter of keeping backups of your email.

[codazoda]

Agreed. I use my own domain and I use my providers email forwarding to a sass email client. If my email provider pisses me off I just change my forwarding to some other provider. I may lose old mail, if the provider goes away completely, but that's not too big a deal for me and backups could solve it if it was important.

Now, if my domain host goes belly up, I'll probably have a somewhat painful process of porting my domains elsewhere. It's still doable but it would probably mean a few days of downtime.

[trumped]

only use your own domain if you want everything tied to your real name