E-mail tips

As I sorted through several dozen newly arrived e-mails this morning I noticed one from "Provider Inc." with "Order Sales Order" in the subject line. "Damn phishers," I thought as I prepared to send the message to the digital Dumpster.

On second thought, I wondered what would make someone fall for a message that appeared to me like an obvious phishing attempt. Well, people respond to sales receipts even if they haven't bought anything online recently--nobody wants to be charged for something they didn't buy.

So "Sales Order" was the … Read more

Every day computer criminals find new ways to trick us into downloading viruses, keyloggers, adware, and other software intended to steal our personal information, spy on us, or simply irritate. But malware prevention doesn't have to be complicated. A few simple precautions can keep your PC free of infection.

Computer security begins and ends with the operating system. If you use Windows, upgrade to Windows 7. The upgrade-to-the-latest-version rule is less stringent for older releases of Mac OS X, Linux, and Android, but Windows XP and Vista should be considered … Read more

Technologies come and go, but e-mail just keeps chugging along. According to a Pew Internet report released August 9, search and e-mail remain the most popular Internet activities: 92 percent of online adults use search engines, and 59 percent use them on an average day; e-mail is also used by 92 percent of adults online, 61 percent of whom use it on a typical day.

So it's no surprise e-mail scams continue to proliferate. The FBI's New E-Scams & Warnings page is alerting people to scam e-mails purporting to be raising money to help victims of Hurricane Irene. … Read more

A reader named Eddy contacted me the other day to ask how to block mail from specific people in Mozilla Thunderbird. Eddy also wants to be notified when mail comes from certain addresses.

While I am familiar with how to create rules in Microsoft Outlook to block senders and receive notifications when mail arrives from a particular person or address, I had never tried to do the same in Thunderbird. It turns out Thunderbird's filters make it easy to automatically block mail from a person or address, but there's no equivalent in Thunderbird to Outlook's ability to … Read more

Organizations large and small rely on Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to get the job done. In some ways Outlook is the poor cousin of the three high-profile Office apps. But the true workhorse in Microsoft's ubiquitous suite is the unglamorous e-mail/contact manager/task scheduler.

These six tips for Outlook 2010, 2007, and 2003 will let you spend less time reopening archived messages, jog your memory about reminders, drag files to send them as attachments, add terms to the spell checker, clear space on the taskbar, and enhance your list of click-saving keyboard shortcuts for Outlook.… Read more

Phishing attacks are on the rise: the Anti-Phishing Work Group's April 2011 Global Phishing Survey (pdf) reports 67,677 phishing attempts in the second half of 2010, up from 48,244 in the first half of 2010, but down significantly from the 126,697 attacks recorded in the year-earlier period due to the Avalanche botnet.

Phishing attempts lasted an average of 73 hours in the last six months of 2010, up from 58 hours on average in the first half of the year, and from just under 32 hours in the second half of 2009.

When it comes to … Read more

The concern about Google, Facebook, and other popular Web services tracking their customers may have you wondering whether there are more-private alternatives. The Ixquick.com metasearcher, PrivacyHarbor.com and Hushmail e-mail services, and FolkDirect social network promise to stay out of your affairs.

Metasearch minus tracking and history Google lets you erase all or part of your Web history with five clicks: after you sign into your account, click the down arrow in the top-right menu, choose Account Settings, select Web History under "My products" (you may need to sign in again), click Clear entire Web History, and … Read more

Earlier this week, German software vendor Ashampoo warned users of its products that the company's servers had been hacked and some of its users' e-mail addresses had been stolen. (CNET's Elinor Mills describes the breach in her InSecurity Complex blog.)

Ashampoo didn't disclose the number of addresses lost, but the breach likely pales in comparison to the e-mail addresses exposed in the massive hack of the servers at e-mail marketing service Epsilon, which was disclosed in the first week of April.

Malware purveyors may not need to hack a company's server to get their hands on … Read more

As your e-mail inbox fills up, it can be difficult to distinguish the important messages from the ones you can read later--if at all. One way to help identify personal e-mails from impersonal ones is by the number of recipients. By highlighting messages sent only to you, you're less likely to miss mail requiring your immediate attention.

Last November I described how to merge multiple e-mail accounts and organize them by using filters and labels. This can help shuttle less-important messages out of your inbox and into folders you can peruse at your leisure.

But not all the non-filtered … Read more