safest e-mail access for 9 year old

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DS is very keen to have his own e-mail account but we are utter numpties at this sort of thing.

How do we, which e-mail address provider do we use ?

Please talk to me about internet safety

An email address does not expose your ds to any risks per se, so provider is largely irrelevant on that score. What are your actual worries?

My dh has his first name as a part of his email address and gets spam about penis enlargements and similar with thousands of other people with the same first names so

robertfoster,robertforest,robertforwhatitsworth,

and so on. I don't get any spam at all and I have my (woman's name) in my address. So I would advise him not to have his name in the address.

I use gmail and I have no problems with it at all. It's a bit more 'with it' than hotmail I would say.

My 10yr old has a gmail account which works well (I have one too and my address is the 'fallback' one in case of problems with his account). He has never had any spam in nearly a year of using it. IME you only open yourself to spam if you supply your email address for online shopping/surveys etc. I also have his account set up on my iPhone so I can monitor what's going in and out of it.

We want to be able to monitor all his e-mails in and out.

He wants to use a made up address id that doesn't sound like a real person's name if that explains it so hopefully he won't get penis enlargement spam mails

Def recommend gmail. You can use any name you like, I suggest something he will remember that is relevant to him. Note that if it sounds like a silly name then it might end up in other peoples spam filters, ie they won't realise it's from him. All of us have gmail addresses that are our full name @gmail and all spam goes automatically into the spam filter, which I empty about once a month and has only collected about 6 emails in that time. DS has NEVER had any, but that's cos he never submits his address on any online sites. He only uses it for email school friends and his relatives, and for a YouTube account (google and YouTube are linked, and his YouTube is set up for him to put videos on for private view only)

IME hotmail is dreadful for spam and for account hacking, yahoo gets a lot of spam, and ISP-based addresses are annoying cos it's difficult to access them when not at home and if you change ISP then you lose that address. Gmail has been the best I have used.

On my iPhone I can install as many email account as I like so I have my own (three) accounts plus DS's and they just show up as a list so you can go into whichever you want and see new messages.

I do believe giving them access to Internet etc now is important and making it freely available, not too censored, is the way to prevent misuse. My kids know about Wiki and Google and that I can see what theyve recently been searching for and are really very sensible. I think all the 'net nannies' etc mean that kids get curious about what they're not allowed to see and so try to get round it and get sneaky. We have a pc in the kitchen that the use so it's always supervised and DS1 is allowed to take a laptop in his room for doing homework projects (PowerPoint). If abuse occurs, we would simply remove the privilege, take their accounts off the pc so they can't log in, and/or switch off the router. But up till now the worst that has happened is DS2 typing 'boobies' into a Wiki search and DS1 telling tales about it.

HTH sorry for rambling!

Oh one more thing

I get penis enlargement and Viagra emails in my fullname@yahoo spam filter

And Santander/HSBC/Barclays (none are banks I use)phishing emails in my fullname@gmail spam filter

Spam filtering on gmail is very good. Avoid hotmail and Yahoo.

Having first names in the email address won't make much difference. My mother in law's email account is [email protected] and she has had 2 spam emails in the last 5 years, IIRC.