Really? Hotmail Users Are More Likely to Crash

I admit it, I use a Hotmail account; I actively dislike Gmail. I have a Gmail account, it just doesn’t work for me. People often laugh when I give them an email ending with @hotmail.com. But so what? I can deal with that. But what is hard to deal with is the discrimination when it comes to car insurance; apparently, Hotmail users are more likely to crash, thus, some insurers are charging more for their premiums.

Admiral car insurance has been accused of putting up premiums for people with Hotmail addresses, claiming that they are more likely to crash. It would be relatively easy for Hotmail users to get their premiums back down again by changing to a more respectable Gmail address, but unfortunately none of them will be able to, because they don’t know how to use the internet.

In the beginning, we all got a Hotmail address to use as an alternative to a work address, some time between discovering email and realising your boss could read them all (circa 1996). The downfall started – and this will be a curiosity to digital natives – when people started to pay for their personal email account. Because it was free, Hotmail attracted all the people who didn’t want to pay or didn’t know you could and thereby became tainted by them, this being the era when paying for stuff still conveyed connoisseurship, rather than cluelessness. It didn’t help that there was nothing sacred about a Hotmail account, because you could just get another one, so there were a lot of [email protected]. Plus it was global, so you could never get your own name unless you added nine digits after it, like a Russian trollbot. Soon, it was all basically teenagers and people who needed a second email account for their double life.

I remember when I had my email address in the 90’s and people looked puzzled. I didn’t think they were idiots who knew nothing about technology or how to drive a car without crashing. So forgive me if I don’t care if people don’t like my email address but I won’t give it to my car insurer any time soon.