Don't Mix Personal and Business Email

Don't Mix Personal and Business Email

Those of you in business know about the best practice of keeping separate personal and business bank accounts and credit cards. Any accountant will tell you this is a no-no for several reasons. 

It's best to follow this no-mix approach for email too. Limiting our business email accounts to business matters only, including creating spam and filter lists that black-list all non-business correspondence, will reduce the threats of malware and hacking.   

Will-nilly email sending
Why? Because of the willy-nilly approach many users take to opening, sending, and forwarding potentially unsafe emails (I'm guilty too!), you increase your risk of mixing those types of missives in your in-box with important business email. Some malware and hacks that gain a foothold on your computer via email can wipe out data, take over the email account, and infect the email program or browser. 

I'm not suggesting the business, professional, and governmental world does not bat around junk email and infected messages. But the variety and exposure is generally more limited. This is partly because many institutions have strict email use policies and stringent filtering of inbound and outbound email. This is largely not true for the personal email user. 

How to un-mix the accounts
The easiest remedy to un-mix your email - if you don't already have a personal email address - is to create a free gmail account. Choose a non-identifying address, one that doesn't include your name or pointers to who you are. For example, you can refer to a hobby (passion) like fishing: live.to.fish808@gmail.com. (It's easy to add a gmail account to your phone or tablet after set up in a web browser on a computer.)

Once you create the new email, notify all friends and family to send email only there. Re-route any subscription or online shopping accounts to that address too, or create a new email for that type of thing.

Filter your business mail
Then in your business email account/program, set up a filter to block anyone not in your business contacts list.  

The joy of a smaller inbox
One joy you will notice from doing this is your business email in-box will shrink dramatically. And you'll not be distracted by the noise of non-business messages. 

Personal email browser
As for your personal email, you can keep it handy in a browser window, which you can flip to when you like. If using gmail for your personal email, I recommend using Google Chrome. If you're already using Chrome for your business email, then I suggest using Firefox for the personal account. A better practice is to not access personal email on a work computer; use a personal laptop, tablet, or phone. 

Related article
You may also like to read my post about segregated web browsing, which dovetails with this article. 

Thanks for reading.
Sam

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