Archives - Email Tips


Set up email filters for maximum control and protection

Today’s automatic filters are pretty good at keeping spam out of your inbox. However, they don’t catch everything, meaning the occasional oddball message will still slip through. Good news: You can protect your account with advanced filters configured for specific addresses and domains. Gmail, Yahoo and other major mail providers all include these features.

Regularly delete emails in your spam folder

Depending on the time of year, spam messages account for between 50 and 60 percent of all email traffic. In addition to containing potentially dangerous content, at that volume they can also easily eat up your entire inbox capacity. Instead of waiting the normal 30 days for automatic deletion, consider manually mass-deleting them each day […]

Turn off HTML rendering in your email client

Many email security risks, including the recent PGP hack, stem from the use of HTML and CSS within content-rich emails. Depending on your email client, you may be able to disable HTML, which simplifies the email reading experience and mitigates the risks from some attacks reliant on this vector.

Uninstall GPG/PGP email plugins (as of May 2018)

In May 2018, it was revealed that the commonly used encrypted email protocol PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) was vulnerable to a certain sophisticated cyber attack. This is unsurprising in a way, since PGP has been around for decades. For protection, you should uninstall any PGP plugins in emails clients like Apple Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird.

Reduce email spam using filters or spam tagging

Many email programs offer filtering capabilities that allow you to block certain addresses or to allow only email from addresses on your contact list. Many ISPs also offer spam tagging services that allow the user the option to review suspected spam messages before they are deleted. Spam tagging can be useful in conjunction with filtering […]

Never post your email address to a public forum

If you want to give someone on a message board or social network you email address, it’s best to send it to them via a private message. Alternatively, you can type out the address, substituting actual words for the “@” and “.” symbols. These techniques protect you from having your email captured by automatic scanners […]