Recognizing Harmful E-mail

A child is dying! A virus spreading, friend asking whether you still like him, a bank seeking confirmation of your details or an eBay user asking why he didn't receive his package from you yet.

Any such e-mail arriving at your Inbox may, and most often is harmful to your computer, data and to you. It's pointless to describe each and every type separately, since new ideas pop up every day. Luckily there are several steps you can take to recognize such messages and hit the Delete key before anything wrong happens.

1. If the e-mail is advertising anything and asking you to buy it, hit Delete.
2. If the e-mail is in a language you don't understand, hit Delete.
   
3. If the e-mail is asking you to forward it to any/all of your friends, no matter the reason hit Delete.
4. If the e-mail comes from a website or institution you don't remember ever using or contacting, hit Delete.
5. If the e-mail doesn't specifically mention you as addressee, by full name and/or distinct username you know and use, hit Delete.
6. If you do know the sender but the content doesn't fit to what you normally receive from that person, check it through a different channel - call him, e-mail back, whatever - if you can't confirm, hit Delete.

These should keep you safe in almost any situation you'll encounter. It's common sense, isn't it? That is exactly what it boils down to - think before acting.

The Love's Back

I'm in love with my e-mail again. A bit lonely but anxious and excited. No more spam is reaching my Inbox, no hundreds of messages impossible to catch by the Bayes filter. All mailing lists are filtered into their appropriate folders and the Inbox stays empty for most of the day. Once something arrives in it I know it's meant for me and only for me. It's a little hug full of love. Thank you, Google!

The Love here is taken straight from the Inbox Zero Tech Talk, referring to the youth times of e-mail in general, when the tiny amount people using it was reason enough to make it exciting. What made me fall in love again is Google Apps. I tried it earlier this week for another domain I was owning and was so happy with the results I decided to use it to manage my personal and my family's e-mail.

It took 5 minutes to set the whole thing up, including buying a new domain through Google and setting up 4 initial user accounts. 10 more minutes to reconfigure my other accounts to forward e-mail to Google and set up the client.

Now I am harnessing the full power of GMail, including their great spam filter. My family enjoys the service as well, with all of us having nice addresses as well as other goodies like Calendar, Talk and the occasional document collaboration. It's all about connecting people again.