A friend wants to use web-based mail from work, but a 
firewall blocks all the most common web-based mail
services.  What are some of the less known ones?

Hello again, Paul!

I've put together a list of ten web-based email providers that are off
the beaten path.

Beer.com 
http://mms.beer.com/beermail/beerMail_information.htm

Boardermail.com
http://boardermail.com/

CentralPets.com
http://mail.centralpets.com/

CoolGoose.com
http://www.coolgoose.com/

Graffiti.net
http://www.graffiti.net/scripts/common/index.main?signin=1&lang=us

JesusAnswers.com
http://mail.jesusanswers.com/email/scripts/loginuser.pl

Recycler.com
http://www.recycler.com/asp/rmail.asp

SacMail.com
http://www.sacmail.com/

UYmail.com
http://www.uymail.com/

Whitemail.ie
http://personal.whitemail.ie/

There's a long list of free web-based email services here:

EmailAddresses.com: Free Web-Based Email Services
http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_web.htm

A list of free POP3 mail services:

EmailAddresses.com: Free POP3 Email Services
http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_pop.htm

Here's the Google Directory's list, categorized by letter:

Google Directory: Computers > Internet > E-mail > Free > Web-Based 
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/E-mail/Free/Web-Based/

I hope this will help your friend to arrange email service that will
not be blocked by his employer's firewall. Please let me know if
there's anything further I can do for you. If none of these links
leads to success for your friend, I'll be glad to resume the quest.

Best,
Pink

good work as always

Another option is to have him set up a proxy server (squid) at his
house on a well known port (21, 80, 443, etc) that will redirect all
traffic for you.  Essentially all requests will be to that host
through the specified port, but the host can then turn around and
access the internet on any port/site available to it (probably all). 
Then you can install a different browser (Opera, Firefox, etc) to use
that proxy server.  I do this because my company blocks traffic on any
port other than 21, 80 and 443.  I use dyndns.org to keep track of the
IP address; the Linksys WRT54G router has a nice client built into it.
 There are also plenty of clients available if you have a direct
connection to the internet (shudder).

He could also register a domain name (www.godaddy.com $8.95 a year or
less, depending on .com, .net, etc.) and host it at a host that allows
for one or more email accounts. Go Daddy has a $3.95 plan that would
allow for 100 accounts, so he could also offer free (or paid) email
accounts to friends and family, then use the webmail option for his
own use at work. Since it would be his own domain name, there's no way
it's on any kind of email domain roster.

Keep in mind, however, that most companies with this kind of policy
also use internal spyware to track internet usage, and may even cache
(keep copies of) internet transactions for all users.  These same
companies tend to have written policies outlining that the computer is
for business use only. So, he may get away with it for a while, maybe
even years, but folks may eventually catch up with him, in which case
they may ask or demand that he stop or risk action possibly including
termination.  The latter is in direct relation to how serious the
company may be regarding its IT security policies and employee use of
company resources.

There are some creative ways to post content on the site to make it
look like a legit business oriented site so that it could be added to
a roster of "allowed" websites, if the IT department takes it to that
extreme.

Thank you very much for the five stars and the tip!

~pinkfreud