Securing Gmail
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Gmail, Google's email service, has some vulnerabilities that could allow unauthorized access to your email. To beef up security, make sure you are using a secure HTTPS connection to Gmail by checking your browser's address bar. The address should begin with "https://" if you are using a secure connection. While HTTPS is not without its own vulnerabilities, it's better than naked surfing.
You can configure Gmail to always use HTTP by clicking Settings from the main Gmail window. In the General tab under Browser Connection (at the bottom), select "Always use https."
Other email services like Yahoo and Hotmail don't allow this option. Your most secure option is to download your email using a program like Mozilla Thunderbird instead of viewing it on the Web. (In my opinion Outlook and Outlook Express won't do anything to enhance your security because they have their own problems.)
Posted byTriona Guidry at 9:47 AM 0 comments
Labels: advanced users, alerts, beginners, email, security
How To Organize Your Email
Monday, March 16, 2009
Do you despair over your email? Many of us store everything in one great big Inbox, but that's not very efficient. You can use a combination of folders, rules, and spam filters to pare your email down to manageable size.
Folders let you sort email any way you like. You might want to create one folder for business and another for personal correspondence. Create subfolders for each person and voila! organized email.
Rules redirect messages to folders, keeping your Inbox clear for the most important emails. I subscribe to many mailing lists, but don't have time to read them every day. I use my email program's Rules option to direct these messages into subfolders. I can see when these subfolders have new unread messages, but I don't have to weed through them until I'm ready.
Spam filters, like puppies, behave best when trained. Check your email program or provider's Help for your settings. Once your spam filter knows what you consider spam, it'll do its best to redirect to a Junk or Spam folder. You'll still get the occasional spam sneaking through, but if you keep marking as spam your filter will continue to improve.
Next month I'll answer a frequently asked question: What Is Java? If you have any computer questions click Comments below this article, and don't forget to subscribe to the email version of Tech Tips for bonus tips and product reviews.
Posted byTriona Guidry at 10:05 AM 0 comments
Is AOL Censoring Blogspot Links?
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
This is why I started Triona's Tech Tips – because there are murky things going on in the computer world that consumers have no way of detecting. Today it's your Internet service providers, who are once again doing things without telling their subscribers.
In starting this blog, I naturally added its address to my email signature:
trionas-techtips.blogspot.com
In the course of checking my Monday morning mail, I sent a reply to a client with whom I've worked for years. Imagine my surprise at the following bounce message:
PERM_FAILURE: Rejected by the recipient domain. The error that the other server returned was:
554 554-: (HVU:B1)http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html
554 TRANSACTION FAILED.
I recognized the error because it's an unusual one, and because I'd just seen it over the weekend when sending a non-work-related email. I immediately recognized the commonalities: both emails were addressed to AOL users, and happened to have links to Blogspot blogs.
A little web sleuthing came up with this:
http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/05/aol-vs-blogspot.html
It appears AOL has decided, without telling its users, that it's no longer going to accept email messages that happen to contain Blogspot links. And Blogspot happens to be owned by Google.
This is a horrible precident, one that echoes the arguments in favor of net neutrality. If it's okay for an Internet provider to decide which links it will allow in email, what's to stop them from, say, refusing all emails from non-affiliated providers? Imagine if your cell phone company decided you couldn't receive calls from another company's customers!
This isn't going to provide computer security for AOL users, as the error message implies. It's going to send those users – who are already plenty ticked about their degrading service, especially dial-up – straight into the arms of some other provider.
If you're an AOL user and suddenly not receiving some emails, this may be part of your answer. And if you are emailing AOL users, you'll have to break up the “blogspot” address, like this:
trionas-techtips.b l o g spot.com
Otherwise your message may never reach your recipient, and you may never know why.
Posted byTriona Guidry at 6:55 AM 0 comments