A Case for Multiple Email Accounts
As the web of our digital life expands, so does our risk of getting hacked. For various reasons and by various means, our email addresses are scattered around the Internet. Because of this exposure any one of us can become a target, even the kindly grandmother who rarely does much online. All it takes to get invaded is to click one poisoned weblink in an email.
Sometimes the poisoned weblink infects only the browser (browser hijacking); sometimes it infects the whole computer (a ransomware attack). Sometimes though, the hack is a more focused attempt to breach an email account.
Tempting Targets
Email accounts are rich targets. If someone can gain unauthorized access to an email account s/he can view our contacts and our email database - the content of all the emails we keep, even the "deleted" stuff!
Don't Mix Business with Pleasure
For years I have been recommending that my commercial clients do not use business email accounts for personal use. It's best to use the company email for commercial contacts only. In my experience, hacks are more likely to occur through personal emails, as they're linked to social networking and a whole variety of people who may not be as security-conscious as corporate email systems tend to be.
Three's Company
For personal email accounts, I'd recommend three email accounts: one for family and close friends; another for finance and banking; and a third for everything else, such as subscriptions, online shopping, social networks, etc.
For the first email, you can choose something personal, like part of your name for the address; for the second, be a little vaguer; for the third, be very vague - don't use any part of your name or personal info.
Damage Control
Now just because you have three email accounts this doesn't mean you're bulletproof online. But if someone hacks the third account, they won't gain access to the content of the first or second. The last thing you want is someone gaining access to ALL your email contacts when they hack your account. That's a nightmare for everyone.
A Vote for Gmail
As much as I like to support the "little guy and gal" in business, I think Gmail is the best bet for personal email. It has good spam filtering, good 2-step authentication, and other security features. Of course, when using Gmail, you must put up with ads and whatever online tracking Google is currently implementing. But it is free, so we can't expect to get something for nothing.
Best Practices to Keep Safe
Whichever email service you use, and whatever strategy you use to keep some segregation between email accounts, it's best to use unique passwords for each email account, set strict spam controls, and be very careful when clicking any links in email messages. When in doubt, delete. And never transmit personally identifying information (PII) like social security numbers, etc. by email.
Email is a wonderful tool for personal and business communications. Just keep your guard up while using it, because it's a portal to so much about you, and you have rights as to what is disclosed.
Thanks for reading!
-Sam
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Showing posts with label spam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spam. Show all posts
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Boost Your Email Security or Suffer
Boost Your Email Security or Suffer
For years now the electronic mail system of the Internet (email) has been a victim of annoying advertising spam and virus attacks.
The latest threats to email include hacking to take control of the account, spam with links that when clicked infect a computer with ransomware, and tracking/spying on email usage by email providers and their affiliates.
Below are some suggestions for boosting email security. Remember though, networking and the Internet were not designed from the ground up to be a secure communication system, nor was email. Whenever you send something via email it can be compromised somewhere along the communication chain.
Wishing you a safe day in cyberspace!
Thanks for reading.
For years now the electronic mail system of the Internet (email) has been a victim of annoying advertising spam and virus attacks.
The latest threats to email include hacking to take control of the account, spam with links that when clicked infect a computer with ransomware, and tracking/spying on email usage by email providers and their affiliates.
Below are some suggestions for boosting email security. Remember though, networking and the Internet were not designed from the ground up to be a secure communication system, nor was email. Whenever you send something via email it can be compromised somewhere along the communication chain.
- Use separate accounts for business and personal use. In my opinion, it's generally more likely a personal email account will be compromised. You don't want your business contacts exposed by a hack.
- Ditch Yahoo email. Use Gmail instead. True, there are privacy concerns with Gmail. But I believe Google does a much better job at security than Yahoo. Just read the recent news on the hacks of Yahoo's system and their failure to take action and disclose.
- Use 2-step verification. This requires that someone trying to access your email from a device you haven't previously used/approved will need to enter a code sent by text to your phone to gain access.
- Use unique, complex passwords for each account, and make sure passwords are not used for any other online accounts.
- Don't send anything confidential by email. As mentioned earlier, email isn't inherently secure. So don't email account numbers, passwords, social security numbers, etc. If you must share this stuff via email, find a means to encrypt the data, such as zipping an attachment with the 7-zip program and using a password/encryption. This is not perfect security, but raises the bar.
- Set your spam scanner on aggressive and check the spam folder often for valid email. You can white-list the wrongly labeled "spam" email so the filter won't screen it out next time.
- Use Antivirus software to scan all email if you use a program like Outlook, Thunderbird, Windows Mail, etc.
- If your email is hacked, changed your password immediately and monitor the account for oddities. If the hacker sent email from you to your contacts, immediately notify your contacts about the hack - tell them to be careful about suspicious content, including asking them to click links.
Wishing you a safe day in cyberspace!
Thanks for reading.
Sam
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If you haven't already, you can subscribe to our email tips by visiting www.kokuadigital.com and entering your name, email, and "add to email list" in the request form, then click Send.
Thursday, September 15, 2016
The Hazards of Spam
The Hazards of Spam
Spam used to be merely an annoyance: junk email ads for meds, romance, degrees, etc. Now it has graduated from annoyance to outright danger. The links provided in spam can lead you to a poisoned website where hackers are positioned to infect your computer.
A tool of hackers
The hacker-run sites may be interactive - enticing you to click something to take further action, which infects your computer. However, in some cases just visiting the site could plague your computer with browser hijacking or a Trojan download. So, as you've heard from me and other IT pros, be very, very suspicious of each and every email you get. When in doubt, delete it!
How did the spammers find you?
You might be wondering how spammers get your email. There are several sources: chatrooms, websites, customer lists, newsgroups, and viruses which harvest users' address books to name a few. A certain class of bots, referred to as "collection bots" also sends spam to entire domains in order to identify the non-bouncing email addresses, which are then added to a commercial spam database. Nice, huh?
How do the spammers make money?
It used to be that if a small percentage of users clicked the junk mail, and then purchased the product advertised, that would suffice. The cost of business for spamming is very low, as millions of prospects can be reached by sending numerous bulk emails. Now, as mentioned above, spammers and their network affiliates can make money from hacked computers too, including using ransomware attacks.
Why can't they be caught and punished?
Spammers distance themselves from law enforcement by operating overseas and by using botnets of infected computers for spam distribution. There are millions of computers worldwide controlled by botnets. Those computers belong to people unaware their computers have been compromised.
Is yours one of them? I suggest that you thoroughly scan your computer after reading this article with at least two scanners, such as Kaspersky or Malwarebytes.
What can you do?
How can you protect yourself from this onslaught of spam? One way is to limit your exposure online. Be careful which websites you give your email to. And consider creating an anonymous-looking email address (nothing to identify you) that you can use for email not relating to work, family and close friends, or trusted financial institutions or ecommerce sites. For example, if you'd like to subscribe to news services, games sites, or social or political causes, use the anonymous email.
It's also best to use a spam filter in your email program, and set it to aggressive. Just make a habit of checking it so you don't miss any important messages. As for any undesirables that slip through the filter, just mark them as spam and they should not reappear.
Open a new email account
If you just can't seem to screen out the volume of spam you get, it's best to open a new email account, and only give it to those contacts in the spam-barraged account you care to maintain contact with. Then just check the old account once a week to see if you're missing anything. But never respond to emails from it.
It takes some effort, but you can fight back against the spam industry.
Thanks for reading.
Spam used to be merely an annoyance: junk email ads for meds, romance, degrees, etc. Now it has graduated from annoyance to outright danger. The links provided in spam can lead you to a poisoned website where hackers are positioned to infect your computer.
A tool of hackers
The hacker-run sites may be interactive - enticing you to click something to take further action, which infects your computer. However, in some cases just visiting the site could plague your computer with browser hijacking or a Trojan download. So, as you've heard from me and other IT pros, be very, very suspicious of each and every email you get. When in doubt, delete it!
How did the spammers find you?
You might be wondering how spammers get your email. There are several sources: chatrooms, websites, customer lists, newsgroups, and viruses which harvest users' address books to name a few. A certain class of bots, referred to as "collection bots" also sends spam to entire domains in order to identify the non-bouncing email addresses, which are then added to a commercial spam database. Nice, huh?
How do the spammers make money?
It used to be that if a small percentage of users clicked the junk mail, and then purchased the product advertised, that would suffice. The cost of business for spamming is very low, as millions of prospects can be reached by sending numerous bulk emails. Now, as mentioned above, spammers and their network affiliates can make money from hacked computers too, including using ransomware attacks.
Why can't they be caught and punished?
Spammers distance themselves from law enforcement by operating overseas and by using botnets of infected computers for spam distribution. There are millions of computers worldwide controlled by botnets. Those computers belong to people unaware their computers have been compromised.
Is yours one of them? I suggest that you thoroughly scan your computer after reading this article with at least two scanners, such as Kaspersky or Malwarebytes.
What can you do?
How can you protect yourself from this onslaught of spam? One way is to limit your exposure online. Be careful which websites you give your email to. And consider creating an anonymous-looking email address (nothing to identify you) that you can use for email not relating to work, family and close friends, or trusted financial institutions or ecommerce sites. For example, if you'd like to subscribe to news services, games sites, or social or political causes, use the anonymous email.
It's also best to use a spam filter in your email program, and set it to aggressive. Just make a habit of checking it so you don't miss any important messages. As for any undesirables that slip through the filter, just mark them as spam and they should not reappear.
Open a new email account
If you just can't seem to screen out the volume of spam you get, it's best to open a new email account, and only give it to those contacts in the spam-barraged account you care to maintain contact with. Then just check the old account once a week to see if you're missing anything. But never respond to emails from it.
It takes some effort, but you can fight back against the spam industry.
Sam
---
If you haven't already, you can subscribe to our email tips by visiting www.kokuadigital.com and entering your name, email, and "add to email list" in the request form, then click Send.
Monday, August 29, 2016
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.
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
Sam
---
If you haven't already, you can subscribe to our email tips by visiting www.kokuadigital.com and entering your name, email, and "add to email list" in the request form, then click Send.
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