What email provider do you use? The classic Hotmail? Perhaps the rising Gmail? Or maybe you just Yahoo because you find it ironic. Whatever you use, here is a terrifying thought: there is a decided connection between what email provider you use, and what your credit score is.

Don’t believe me? A survey was taken with 20,000 credit scores, and the score and the email providers were linked, and it became clear: the word after the @ in your email address tells more about you, than you thought. Take a look:

credit score

You can read the chart for yourself, if you use Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail, you are the bottom rungs of the credit score list. Gmail, Comcast, and BellSouth are indicative of the highest scores. This partly makes sense, Comcast and BellSouth are broadband providers, and if you can afford cable internet enough to keep an email account with them, you are paying your bill. Pay the bill, boost your credit score.

The free providers, perhaps more generally used by accessing public computers or using dial-up connections, would be used by people who might have less money, which is indicated by their lack of broadband. Of course, generally less money coincides with a lower credit score. These are broad strokes, attack me not.

Finally, Gmail is a bit of a red herring in the mixture: it is a free service, with a userbase with top tier credit. My thought is that due to its insane popularity with the technorati and the educated, its free status hurts it less than Yahoo or Hotmail. Also, Gmail is used by a number of universities (Northwestern, for example) as the basis for their collegiate email. Perhaps we can then draw a general connection between education and usage of Gmail.

What do you use? Are you offended by this?