What if your email service closes?

If your email provider ends the service, you have some work to do It doesn’t happen very often. If an email provider goes out of business or withdraws from providing the service, they usually sell their email client base to another provider. Things then go on pretty much the same. Occasionally, though – and increasingly …
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It is safe to “preview” emails

You don’t risk opening Pandora’s Box just by previewing an email message Most email programs (such as Outlook and Thunderbird) and most webmail sites (such as outlook.com and Gmail) allow you to “preview” an email message before opening the message in a separate window. This is usually known nowadays as opening a “reading pane”. It …
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Email – why you might not want to download pictures

One man’s privacy is another man’s paranoia Most – if not all – email clients and webmail services allow you to choose whether to automatically download images that are included in email messages. They usually also offer fine-tuning that allows you to block images from all senders except those that you choose to add to …
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Detecting Scam and Phishing Emails

From time to time, I get a phone call from one of my computer support clients asking whether an email they have received is genuine or a scam (eg a phishing email). Quite often, they will forward the message to me for my comments Checking back on nearly seven years of blog posts, I’m surprised …
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Spear Phishing

Phishing for your information (and money) is becoming more sophisticated We’ve all received phishing emails that pretend they are from trusted sources such as banks. They want us to hand over information that will let them steal money from us. And who among us hasn’t made their fortune by partaking of a Nigerian businessman’s plan …
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Email Rules

Has your email inbox become intimidating? For a lot of people (myself included), email is not just a means of communication: it is a central part of the administration of their work. As such, it needs to be efficient and organised. This can be difficult when there are hundreds, or even thousands, of messages flying …
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Filtering Foreign Junk Email in Outlook

Have you noticed an increase in foreign spam recently? During the last month or two I have become aware of a huge increase in the amount of spam getting into my inbox from abroad. Not only is a lot of it not in English, but a lot of it even uses different character sets (such …
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Deleting Emails from iPhone Inboxes

Small iPhone niggle solved! Following on from last week’s blog about blocking unwanted phone calls, I have finally had a look at a problem with iPads and iPhones when attempting to delete emails from the inbox. When I open my iPhone Mail app I like to be able to see the option to view all …
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Confusing Outlook

As a Computer Consultant discussing client’s systems, programs and computing choices, it often strikes me that Microsoft have created a lot of confusion by using the word “Outlook” in the names of three different email products. This confusion is particularly marked, of course, if I’m providing telephone support on one of the “Outlooks” but the …
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