Email
Education
Prepared by
Joann Humby
joannpc@terra.es
1 – Make
a backup. Make it today. Update it regularly.
Google how to do it!
http://www.insideoe.com/backup/
Is a good guide for Outlook Express users but you may need someone to show
you the ropes the first time. Backup messages and your address book. The
backup should be copied to CD or another device so it can be stored safely
away from the PC
Webmail has its own rules – but it’s important not to rely on Hotmail,
Yahoo, Gmail etc to look after the only copy of your important emails and
your contacts list. If something goes wrong at their end or if your account
gets hacked, you need your own copy to fall back on.
2 –
What’s in a name?
An email address says something. Consider:
antsmum@hotmail.co.uk
ABCofMoraira@wanadoo.es
anne@abcmoraira.eu
3 – Where
did my email go?
Did it arrive – can I tell?
You can ask for a receipt; you can use a message tracking system but in the
end, the only way to know for sure that an email has been seen by a human is
by asking for a reply.
Why might it not arrive?
Temporary fault on your server (eg: Wanadoo and Tiscali have been having
serious email problems for the past year, Terra/Telefonica have had
intermittent problems for the past month). Problems with the other person’s
server – your email being wrongly identified as Spam.
4 – Why
didn’t I receive that email?
Lost in space – sometimes emails really do get lost between servers. Usually
due to a temporary fault, sometimes due to an ongoing problem between
particular server combinations.
Spam – your system or your server may have identified good mail as Spam
Restrictions – technical and commercial – eg: on message size and content
5 – Types
of email account
Web only – usually free – good for use when you want a spare, temporary or
anonymous account, not so good as a main or business account.
Web and POP access accounts - often paid for, or part of a package – lets
you use a program like Outlook or Outlook Express to read/write emails.
Gmail offers a free web based mail system with good spam filtering that can
be used from Outlook or Outlook Express. It can sometimes offer a good
backup to your “usual” system. I sometimes use it to filter spam mail from
accounts!
6 –
Multiple email accounts
Useful as a way to distinguish between business, family and hobby mail –
important if you get a lot of mail.
Let’s you have a “sacrificial account” for use on bulletin boards and on
websites etc where there’s a risk that your email address may get added to a
spam mailing list.
Gives you an alternate address if your usual server is temporarily down or
is on the banned list of another company (eg: due to spam originating from
another customer)
7 – Too
much mail?
Try and reserve the Inbox folder for the most important (or unexpected)
messages.
In programs like Outlook/Outlook Express - use folders to organise.
Set up message rules to automatically divert mail that can be dealt with
later (eg: from hobby mailing lists etc and mail sent to particular email
accounts) to folders.
8 – Too
much junk mail?
Junk mail, aka Spam, aka unsolicited bulk mail.
Around 85 billion junkmails are sent per day. Around 80% of all email
traffic is spam.
The volume has doubled in the past 6 months.
The ISP/mail server company response – overloaded servers, lots of work
going on to stop spam mail getting in and to stop servers from being used to
send junkmail out. Unfortunately it means good mail is sometimes rejected as
spam and servers are less reliable due to how busy they are and because of
the continual re-engineering
Personal spam filters are available as part of packages from people like
McAfee, as part of products like MS Outlook2007 and as standalones like
MailWasher and SpamFighter. My personal preference is for a product that can
be trained (by you!) to recognise what counts as good mail and bad mail for
you – programs like K9 and SpamBayes do this.
9 –Your
own domain?
Packages that include registration of a domain name (eg: BigHatsJavea.com),
email services and a place to put a website start at around 50 Euros per
year. Without the website space that price comes down to around 30 Euros or
less.
10 – And
Finally
Make a backup! |