The Most Common Mistakes in Email Security

[srtools1980y]

The Most Common Mistakes in Email Security

Properly managing your email accounts

1. Using just one email account.

Individuals new to email often think about their email account like they do their home address, you only have one home address, so you should only have one email. Instead, you should think about your email address like you do your keys; while it may be OK to use the same key for your front and your back door, having a single key open everything is both impractical and unsafe.

A good rule of thumb for the average email user is to keep a minimum of three email accounts. Your work account should be used exclusively for work-related conversations. Your second email account should be used for personal conversations and contacts, and your third email account should be used as a general catch-all for all hazardous behavior. That means that you should always sign up for newsletters and contests only through your third email account. Similarly, if you have to post your email account online, such as for your personal blog, you should only use your third email account (and post a web friendly form of it at that).

While your first and second email accounts can be paid or freebie, your third 'catch-all' account should always be a freebie account such as those offered by Gmail or Yahoo!. You should plan on having to dump and change out this account every six months, as the catch-all account will eventually become spammed when a newsletter manager decides to sell your name or a spammer steals your email address off a Web site.

2. Holding onto spammed-out accounts too long.

It is simply a fact of life that email accounts will accumulate spam over time. This is especially true of the account you use to sign up for newsletters and that you post online (which as stated above should not be your main email account). When this happens, it is best to simply dump the email account and start afresh. Unfortunately, however, many new email users get very attached to their email accounts and instead just wade through dozens of pieces of spam every day. To avoid the problem, prepare yourself mentally ahead of time for the idea that you will have to dump your 'catch all' account every six months.

3. Not closing the browser after logging out.

When you are checking your email at a library or cybercaf

[exile360]

Excellent info .

I keep several emails just for those purposes and I don't open email from those I don't know, I don't open forwarded email from those I do know and I never access my email from any computer but my own. Also, if I'm not expecting an attachment and someone sends me one, I inspect and scan it thorougly .

[srtools1980y]

You are welcome.

Easy said than done.

[YoKenny1]

Making backups and keeping records

10. Failing to back up emails.

Yery important as Outlook Express stores email in its own .dbx files that easily can become corrupted if not managed effectively

A common problem is with an extremely large size of Inbox.dbx, Sent Items.dbx and Deleted Items.dbx. This may slow down Outlook Express or even cause some data loss problems. That is why it is better not to store all incoming mail only in Inbox folder, make backups and clean up your emails periodically.

http://www.abf-soft.com/dbx-file.shtml

[catscomputer]

This is an excellent post srtools. Thank-you.

Number 7 - Yes yes yes!!!! I'm so careful who I give my email address to, and it annoys me SO much when I receive an email where my address is in the CC column of an email going to goodness knows who else. I've asked people not to send me chain type emails (no matter how cute or funny), and I've asked them to not to put my name in the CC column.... but unfortunately both things still happen a lot. Grrrr!

[yardbird]

good post, thank you

[chimpy]

I have many emails but the main two I use I use through thunderbird and AVG scans those, the rest are yahoo and gmail, weird thing is though thunderbird marks all my mail as having attachments then after i open those and close them the little paper clip disapears!

I still have not got round to asking mozilla why.

Not sure if it is because there is a link in the email from where AVG has scanned it.

[catscomputer]

I have many emails but the main two I use I use through thunderbird and AVG scans those, the rest are yahoo and gmail, weird thing is though thunderbird marks all my mail as having attachments then after i open those and close them the little paper clip disapears!

I still have not got round to asking mozilla why.

I suspect (although I'm not positive) that the attachment will be the AVG signature to say that it's been scanned and no viruses are found. I don't get the signature as an attachment in my outlook emails, but I do when I forward the email to one of my webmail accounts (the original signature that appeared in outlook is sent as an attachment).

[chimpy]

LOL catscomputer, I just tried sending a "hi" email to my thunderbird account to check and saw the AVG link and edit my post just after you posted

[catscomputer]

Mystery solved

(BTW Chimpy I just added a comment for you in your Windows Live Messenger thread, just in case you don't spot it).

[chimpy]

I posted on the forum and apparently its not that its a avg 8.5 issue possibly also non compacting files. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.ph...670685#p7670685

I have never in two years compacted my emails, I just presumed the deleted ones where deleted!

I compacted them but that did not fix it so I will have to mess about with the other fix and create a back up which I really do not want to do as I am no good with computers

[catscomputer]

Interesting. I don't use Thunderbird; I use Outlook 2007. I wonder if "compacting" emails in Thunderbird is the same as archiving emails in Outlook? If it is the same - archiving makes no difference to the issue you describe.

[srtools1980y]

Thank you all for the compliments.

But I am greedy, I want more suggestions so that we can include it in the list.

Because in this types of topics the input from many brains are better than from 1 brain alone.

[catscomputer]

I want more suggestions so that we can include it in the list.

It would be good to add posting your email on publicly viewable spaces on the internet. Search engines record it and before you know you'll be getting spammed to death.

Also with point number one - for anyone who doesn't know about this - yahoo allow you to create disposable addresses that you can use with people/places where you are concerned that spamming could be an issue. If you start getting spam you can simply delete the address, while keeping the MAIN yahoo email address active. I can't remember exactly how many disposable adresses you can create under your main yahoo address - but it is at least ten. The disposable addresses can be completely different to your main email adress too, so your main email address can't be guessed. It's good to still have email accounts with other providers though as you've suggested, in case one of the accounts is compromised.

[catscomputer]

Also...

Having the same preface name to all of your email accounts eg John.Smith@whicheverprovider (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, ihug, paradise etc...)

Having the same password to all your email accounts - especially if you have the same preface name.