Quote:What is a free or anonymous email address?

Any email address that can be obtained by registering somewhere online by anyone is a free email address. This includes providers offering free emails, public forums or message boards, and free trial accounts offered by commercial email providers. If an email address can be obtained based on false user information, or requiring no such information at all, such email address is an anonymous one. Most freemail providers offer addresses that are both free and anonymous. Such email addresses are very commonly abused for committing fraud and are not suitable for placing online orders, especially when paying with a credit card.

While many free email providers may also offer paid email service, there is no distinction between free or paid email addresses. It's not the point whether you are paying for your email address or not, the point is could have that email address been obtained freely and/or anonymously as well, and does it identify you as the owner.
Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are not likely to offer free emails, and will typically provide you with your own personal email address which you can use.

A few examples of well-known free email providers:

* Yahoo.com
* Hotmail.com
* Gmail.com
* AOL.com
* Msn.com
* Mail.com
* GMX Mail
* Lycos.com
* Bigfoot.com
* ICQMail.com
* OperaMail.com
* FastMail.FM
* Pobox.com

(NOT limited to listed only)