<p>Yes, Emeraldkity4, that article did prompt this thread, but it is obvious that people share e-mail accounts for all kinds of reasons. Pizzagirl, we followed the same path – one account when we first had AOL and then separate after they offered multiple accounts. I can’t really imagine not having a landline. My oldest two kids do not have them, but we have so much family business that comes in at our house. We also have lousy cell reception at our house, so we have to have a landline. But I much prefer to use a “real” phone for long calls. I prefer to be on a “real” phone with a speaker phone when I’m on hold for 45 minutes trying to resolve something. I also like being able to hear the phone ring from anywhere in the house and not having to worry about taking a cell phone from room to room with me. I also find that sometimes a voicemail shows up on my cell phone days after it was left – that doesn’t happen on my landline. I’m also not completely convinced about the safety of cell phones.</p>
<p>I don’t even share a computer with my H, much less an email account! We each have our own laptops at home. Sometimes we will use each others’ computers for convenience reasons, but otherwise, I like having my own. It seems like such a personal thing, more like a personal diary than a machine. </p>
<p>Having separate computers and email accounts isn’t really about privacy so much as maintaining some autonomy, which is fine with me.</p>
<p>I insist on keeping our land line even though we all have our own cell phones because we live in NYC. During the aftermath of Sept.11, some cell phone service was temporarily unavailable. I always want our kids to be able to call home.</p>
<p>We have a landline in our home but don’t have one in the apartment. We can make calls using VOIP or our cellphones if we need to. There are devices that can convert your home corded solution to use a cellphone.</p>
<p>Our landline service costs $6/month. The fees and taxes bring it to $16. If we could get rid of the fees and taxes, then the landline would be easy to keep. Especially with services like Google Voice and Yahoo Voice.</p>
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<p>Raises an interesting question. How many computers / laptops do you have?</p>
<p>We had a family one at the beginning (again, when computers were more of a novelty). Then, my kids each got one when they turned 13 and have each gotten a new one as the older one became obsolete for their school needs (DH got one of the “hand me downs” but he’s an infrequent user). We all reserve the right to use someone else’s for convenience purposes though (for example, if my laptop is in the family room and DH needs to check email, use mine instead of running upstairs to get his). So, bottom line, we have 4 laptops for 4 people. You guys?</p>
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<p>I rarely use my cell phone (for many of the reasons you cite), and I’ve always wondered what people do about the above when they have no landline. I work from home, and am constantly going up and down stairs and from room to room in my house. It would drive me crazy to have to keep track of a cell phone.</p>
<p>Everyone in my family has our own laptop, iphone, ipod(before iphone). We all have our own applications that automatically login as soon as our computer is on (Skype, AIM, email(s)). We don’t use someone else’s computer without asking first. We feel it’s no different than going through someone’s drawers without asking.</p>
<p>I have a desk top. H has a desk top, lap top, and work lap top. Kids each have a lap top. We all have log in screens, and would ask before using another’s, but all know each other’s log ins. When we go on family trips, it is always assumed that we will only take one person’s laptop, but we all will be allowed to use it. </p>
<p>As far as “We feel it’s no different than going through someone’s drawers…” - all of us would feel comfortable doing that, actually. We’ve all been known to do each other’s laundry - including putting it away. Or go into each other’s closet looking for something. Or to get a phone call from a college kid saying, “I can’t find this or that - maybe I left it at home. Would you search my room, please?”</p>
<p>But I do draw a line at family. It always surprises and shocks me when a guest or visitor feels comfortable going on my computer without asking, or even using the master bathroom without permission. Or, for that matter, playing my piano without asking. I am very, very open with my own family, and very, very private with everyone else.</p>
<p>As far as whether that means I am not autonomous or am weird as previous posters have suggested - no idea. It works for our family.</p>
<p>Do I share an account? No. Would I? Yes. </p>
<p>My husband often asks me to check his personal email if there’s something important that he’s expecting. He’s inundated with work email at the tune of 100 or more a day that he must attend to, so I’m happy to help with his personal email when he asks. I get tons of email jokes and political news that he has absolutely no interest in. He gets investment and stock information that would bore me to tears. </p>
<p>I have no problem with my kids using my computer, and if I happened to be signed on to my email account, and I hear a click that I’ve gotten mail while they’re using my computer, I’d ask them to check to let me know who it’s from. If it’s from a friend or relative, they no better than to open it because they have a very good chance of seeing a joke or a picture they’d rather not see (lol)…especially if it’s from they’re grandmother (my MIL). She’s a hoot.</p>
<p>My in-laws share an account because my FIL gets very few emails. If I want to send something that I think he’d be interested in reading, I just add his name to the subject line. </p>
<p>Like binx, when we travel, we take one computer, and we all share. At home, we all have lap tops and we have a family desk top. If my laptop was turned on and in the family room, as it usually is, and someone wanted to use it, they’d ask me first, but only to be sure I didn’t need it right away or to be sure I wasn’t in the middle of something. It’s not because I, or any of us, for that matter, have any issue with sharing our computers.</p>
<p>One of the many things I love most about my family and extended family is that we’re very open and sharing with each other. I don’t find it weird that others value their privacy more than we do as a few have said about those who share accounts. If there’s a lack of trust and that’s why one is adamant about either sharing or not sharing an email account (it could go either way), then that’s a problem. Other than that, different strokes…</p>
<p>The thought of sharing an email account with my husband gives me the cold sweats. I can’t think of anything worse than sifting through his bicycle club emails and ads informing him of every new computer or bicycle item. We have more than one computer per resident in our house (don’t ask- it’s H’s thing…). My computer is accessible and email is usually up so it’s not locked and hidden. I’m sure he would be thrilled to wade through all my facebook notifications (emailed), JCrew offers and running club stuff, too.</p>
<p>We have a landline because we apparently need it for our DSL and TV set up. We hardly ever use it except to occasionally order take-out.</p>
<p>My brother shares an email with his wife. He lives some distance away, so when our father was dying I communicated with him by email sometimes. I was deeply hurt to find out that some of the of the responses were actually from his wife, as she didn’t identify and I clearly thought I was speaking to my brother. There was nothing I wouldn’t have said directly to her, but I thought I was speaking to him, they both knew that, and neither clarified. I don’t think that was very nice under the circumstances.</p>
<p>My husband doesn’t know how to use a computer, so that’s not an issue for us!</p>
<p>Coming from a late-twenties/early-thirties married couple…</p>
<p>We share an e-mail address that’s routed to both of our personal e-mail addresses. That way, people can e-mail both of us at the same time if they’d like, and we’ll each automatically recieve a duplicate copy of it. I have my own personal e-mail addresses (one for work, one for home… and all my other e-mail addresses for alumni accounts and things like that are routed to my home one) and he has the same thing (one for work, one for school, one for home). We each know the other’s passwords, so we hypothetically COULD access the other’s accounts, but neither of us do. </p>
<p>We each have iPhones, so most of our communication with the outside world is done through those (aside from, you know, the old-fashioned face-to-face type communication, and written correspondence… I’m a big believer in thank you notes and birthday cards). I can access his iPhone and he can access mine. When he answers my phone, he says “Aibarr’s answering service!” and when I answer his, I say “Aibarr’s husband’s wife and secretary!”</p>
<p>Re: going through drawers-- my husband, who teaches in Utah while I work in Texas, knows that I’m reorganizing the household and purging a lot of stuff we don’t need, and I asked whether or not he was comfortable with my going through his stuff and sorting papers in the interest of decluttering everything before we have to move again. He said yes. I wouldn’t have touched his papers and files, and I wouldn’t have gone through his closet, if I hadn’t been invited to do so. As far as going through drawers, I do the laundry and he does the cooking. If he didn’t want me to go through his drawers, then he should wash his own darned clothes! ;)</p>
<p>Our general policy is that each spouse’s private space is yielded by the other spouse. We don’t lock each other out, but we don’t violate each other’s privacy as a matter of general courtesy.</p>
<p>We don’t have landlines, just cell phones. This will probably change when we buy a house and have kids who are too young to drive (and thus don’t need cells of their own yet).</p>
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<p>Feminist of the new milennium that I am, my husband does all our bookkeeping. (Sigh. Sorry, Gloria Steinem…) It’s certainly not that I’m not smart enough to do it… I have a masters degree in structural engineering and am employed at a top national firm… and DH is a musician, so it’s not as though it’s native to his academic training. It’s simply that I’m bored to TEARS by finances and that he LOVES charting everything out and watching graphs and trends and learning about investments. So, he does his graphs and charts and online updates in Quicken, and we have monthly meetings where we sit down and go over the finances, and how we’re doing. It involves looking at all our retirement accounts and investment accounts and our individual credit reports (so we see all of each other’s financial information… no hiding accounts, here, unless there’s identity theft going on!) so that I understand where we are and so that we both agree upon where we’re headed towards, and how we should budget things, etc. It works for us, so far.</p>
<p>There’s a family desktop, dh and I both have laptops, mathson has two laptops (but one is just the xo) and a desktop, and S2 has a desktop. He’ll also have a laptop when he graduates from high school. There are a few antique laptops hanging around the house too.</p>
<p>The other Mini is around but I never know what he is responding to on CC unless he mentions it or I look. I will pass on the comment.
We have 4 computers in the house when the girls are not home for the 2 of us. I have a work laptop, which I only use for work. David has 2 laptops, a big and a small one, and we had a desktop which everyone shares.
David finally got his own facebook account this year and he often writes on mine by mistake even though our frien list overlaps but is not the same.
Ellen</p>
<p>We have 2 computers, a desktop where DH keeps all the financial info. We just purchased a laptop in the Spring that stays downstairs in the family room for the really important stuff…CC, shopping, all the stuff he didn’t want messing up his upstairs computer.
Each S got a laptop when he went to college.</p>
<p>OK, so I happened to stumble on an article today about what happens to your e-mail when you die. Some accounts will give it over to family – with proof of death. I find that very unsettling. I have had friends discuss very private matters in e-mail with me – about their kids or spouses that they have asked me not to reveal to others. The thought of either my husband or my kids going through my e-mails after I’m dead unsettles me because those people who shared private matters will still be alive. Not that they can’t get into it on my computer but it is one thing for them to go into my computer, it’s another to think about hotmail and Google turning over passwords, etc. I would think it appropriate for them to access my address book in order to let people know (this is so morbid), but I think they should still stay out of e-mails once I’m gone, unless they are e-mails that were sent to them or that I received from them. Or unless it looks like business. But I think e-mails from friends, etc. should be respected as private. I think I’m going to actually have that conversation with my family. I don’t think my kids would (God forbid) want me going through their personal e-mails if something happened to them.</p>
<p>We each have our own laptops in our family (S has 2, a desktop and laptop). One interesting thing is that instead of owning TV’s, they watch programs on their laptops. (S & D are both out of the house.) Neither of them have or use landlines either. They don’t rent DVD’s-- they order direct “instant” movies from netflix. D hasn’t bought a CD since she was 12. Strange new world…</p>
<p>And of course we all have our own email accounts. None of us ever log out, but privacy has never been an issue for us, mostly because we’re not all that interested in each others’ emails!</p>
<p>mimk6 - I think this is the same as what happens to your personal paper correspondence - letters, diaries, etc. My kids can’t wait to get their hands on my old love letters! I remember reading once that once you send a letter or something, it becomes the property of the one you sent it to. I am always aware that email is seldom secure and private.</p>
<p>If there are sensitive things you don’t want shared, use the delete key, and remember to delete them from your online account as well.</p>
<p>Binx, you are right, I can delete and, honestly, I don’t imagine my family wading through my e-mail after I’m gone. Letters are different because you have to go through stuff and decide if it needs to be saved or thrown away – the nice thing about e-mail is it takes no space and no one has to make a decision to take or throw away. I have thrown out a few things I wouldn’t want my kids to come across. What I found odd though is that some servers will give the password over to family members. I can imagine that if someone dies suddenly, family members may come across some unpleasant secrets – e.g. affairs, etc.</p>
<p>If you don’t want someone to find out you’re having an affair, don’t have one.</p>