Controlling emails is hard if you only have one email address. On the other hand, having to regularly scan more than one webmail account is a pain. The best solution I know of is to create additional email addresses, and have emails sent to these addresses automatically forwarded to your normal email address. It even makes sense to have several such additional email addresses, each for a different purpose, and keep your normal email address confidential. If one of the additional email addresses is spammed or misused, then you can just switch it off.
Unfortunately
for us users, most free email providers do not allow users to set up email
forwarding. One that does however is Google. I have just tested one of my Gmail
addresses, and Google took just 7 seconds to forward an email to my normal
email address.
The instructions for taking out a Google account for the first time are to go
to ...
► https://accounts.google.com/SignUp
You have to choose a user name, which is public. However you can choose how
"identifiable" you want to make it. Any (unused) combination
of letters and numbers seems to be fine. I have lots of accounts, some of which
are meant to be unidentifiable, some of which are not. Dots in user names are
treated inconsistently across Google Apps, and therefore may create problems.
However I have read that a dash, an underscore, and even an apostrophe can be
included in a Google user name if you wish.
You then need a strong password.
In case you want added security, Google asks for a mobile phone number, but I
don't think it insists on this. I have given mine, and I don't think Google (or
anybody else) has ever misused it (I have heard somebody saying that
their two factor, mobile phone based security is a pain - but their computer
might be connected to the Internet via a floating IP address and have a “Google
defeating”, high level of browser security).
Google do ask for a real name, and a date of birth. I don't think they check
any of this, but the date has to be in a certain range (E.g. to show that
you are over 18 or something). I am sure some people have an
"on-line" or even perhaps a "Google" birthday. I have not
tried it, but it occurs to me that it could be a way of having two birthdays a
year !
Anyway, once you have created your shiny new Google Account, configure the
associated gmail account by going to...
► http://www.google.co.uk
and click the blue [Sign in] button at top right.
► Enter the "user name" you gave above, into
the box saying "Email",
► and the password into the box saying "Password".
► Then click the blue [Sign in] button.
Once signed in, you should see your Google user name at the top of the window.
► Click the nine-dot "telephone keypad", and
then the [Gmail] icon.
When your emails are listed (initially just the Welcome Email), then…
►
click the wheel at top right, and then select "Settings".
► Then click the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP"
tab.
► Click the [Add a forwarding address] button.
► Enter your normal email address (i.e. not your new
gmail one).
Google then sends a confirmation email to your normal email address. However, before leaving your Google account,
► select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to", and ensure that your normal email address is displayed next to the radio button.
When your confirmation email arrives in your normal inbox…
► click on the link in that email to confirm to Google that you want to receive any emails forwarded from your new Gmail account. Everything should then be working.
To test your new email address and forwarding facility, you can…
► send an email to your new <user name>@gmail.com address, and ensure that in addition to saving the normal "sent" copy, the “forwarded” copy arrives in your normal inbox a few seconds later.
Although receiving emails is anonymous, if you send or reply to anybody from your normal email address, it is likely to have all sorts of identification in it. Therefore to maintain anonymity, it is necessary to send any replies from the gmail account. To do this…
►
go into the appropriate Gmail account and either click [Reply] or the red
[COMPOSE] box on the left.
► Enter the recipient’s email address in the To:
box, and click the blue [Send] box so.
If you want your new Google Account to be anonymous, then since I have read
that Google are trying to “socialise” people into Google Plus, you might want
to check and make sure you are happy with, or delete the information Google
Plus is displaying on the "Profile" part of your account.
With a few precautions, having multiple email addresses with automatic forwarding therefore gives you control, including the ability to turn particular sources of email off and not have that circumvented.
Using different email addresses also makes it much easier to apply rules and filters to give different groups of email sources a different priority. Typically, this would involve creating a different folder for each of the additional email addresses, and perhaps even arranging for different sounds or alert messages to be generated. Uses of such a system include…
☻ Creating a confidential, trusted “banking-only” email address so that you can have more confidence that emails to that address are from a genuine bank.
☻ Creating a high priority, personal email address, so that you can reply to emails sent to that address quickly.
☻ Creating a low priority email address to give to suppliers and commercial firms, so that the resulting spam can be de-prioritised.
☻ Creating a “spammable” email address, for web pages, and “accounts” which demand an email address without good reason. Such an email address can then be switched off or changed when deluged by spam.
back to www.axiomatic.biz