Spamprimer for fighting spam and phishing

Randy Cassingham (of This Is True, a great e-letter) has Spamprimer to advise on how to handle and maybe even reduce spam and phishing attempts.

Handling an email newsletter and web sites, he’s had some experience in dealing with this stuff.  He has some practical advice on what to do, what not to do, what works, and what may not work.

Over 150 tips and shortcuts for Gmail

Dumb Little Man is not so dumb — this useful and interesting site has links to several lists with tips and shortcuts for your Google email account.

MailStore - back up your emails from everywhere

So, you’ve got a Gmail account, a LionsLink, some stuff in Outlook…

How do you make sure you don’t lose any of those vital emails?

MakeUseOf has a post on MailStore Home freeware:

• Keep all your emails (from multiple email accounts) and attachments in one archive.
• Backup emails from: Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Microsoft Exchange Server Mailboxes, AVM KEN! Mailboxes, Thunderbird, Mozilla SeaMonkey, Webmailer, any POP3 and IMAP accounts, from Imported Archive files.
• Saves space by compressing email archives.
• Super-Fast Search: Search all your e-mail within fractions of a second (incl. the contents of attached documents).
• Remove duplicate attachments: MailStore keeps only one copy of each attachment, even if it dozens of emails.
• One-Click Backup: Integrated CD/DVD burning utility to backup your archives with just one click.
• Message Preview: Preview archived messages directly in MailStore. You can even reopen them in your local email client (i.e. Microsoft Outlook).
• What’s missing: Option to setup and schedule automatic backups.

ReachBy puts a form between you and spam

Sometimes you just need to put your email address out there so people can contact you.

If you’re doing it on a web page, you can still put a buffer between you and spam.

MakeUseOf has a post on using ReachBy, a free service that requires people to fill out a form to send to you, instead of posting your email address so spammers can find it.

“ReachBy.com takes a series of defensive measures to protect your contact page from spam. One of them is captcha which is a human-readable image with text not easily recognizable to robots.
In addition, you have a choice to harden your privacy settings by requiring from your visitors to confirm their email address if they want to send you a message. You are also given full control over challenging question in the contact form. Ask something simple with an obvious answer to minimize chances of robot spam. Or even more, ask for a secret code that you share by some other means.
At any time you can make your contact page inaccessible online, which will stop all communication to your email address via this service.”

GSpace add-on for Firefox stores in Gmail

Got a Google GMail account?  Okay, then are you using all the space they give you?  Not yet?

Then consider this Firefox browser add-on called GSpace which lets you FTP through Firefox and store files in there.

“Gspace is the FON friendly site that provides FREE Online Storage to access your files everywhere. Gspace turns the 2GB of your Gmail account into free online storage. With Gspace you can manage unlimited Gmail accounts to store all type of files within its simple, user friendly interface. Listen your favourite stored music directly from your Gspace, view your collections of pictures and manage your Gdrive files as well. Download Gspace now and transfer files between your computer and Gspace at anytime, from everywhere!”

Recommended by PC Magazine, April 2008.

GMX - free email, not a sports car

GMX offers a free email service, which appears comparable to Google’s GMail.

• Unprecedented Spam Protection
• Maximum Virus Protection
• 5 GB E-Mail Storage Space

In addition, GMX Mail supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols, as well as mobile device integration.  GMX respects our customers’ privacy and does not transfer any data to third party companies.

They also offer online file storage.

For an objective opinion, try the About.com review.

Outlook and virus prevention

Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express are popular choices for email and other functions, but they have gained a reputation as primary targets of viruses, trojans, and other malware.  (In fact, ANYTHING from Microsoft tends to be a primary target, since it is the most popular software in many categories, so damage would be done to more users.)

Internet Fixes has advice on avoiding infection while using Outlook Express.   The same precautions will help with regular Outlook.

These include:

• using the latest, updated version of Outlook or Outlook Express
• disabling the Preview Pane when using Outlook or Outlook Express
• sending all messages with attachments to a special folder first, then scanning them with anti-virus software (which you also keep updated!) before opening

REMEMBER: viruses and other malware may steal addresses from a friend and use them to send copies of malware to you.  Just because you got a message from a friend you trust, does not mean that you can trust the message!  Your friend may not even know it was sent to you.

Unspammable email link for your web site

Email spammers use robot software to search web sites for email addresses, and then use those to send you all that worthless junk to fill your inbox.

But you have to have your email address out on your web site, don’t you?

Here’s one answer: an “unspammable” email trick.

“Here’s a script to prevent spammers and email harvesters from finding your email address on your website. The below email address link is unretrievable by spammer robots. Simply update the variables with your email information and replace your mailto: links with this script.”

Combining GCal, Lightning and Thunderbird

The Ubuntu Forums has a detailed thread that shows how you can get the most out of Thunderbird by using the Lightning extension and Google Calendar. Click here for the article.

While this is on a Linux forum, the instructions should work in Windows, too.

Recommended by Lifehacker.

GMail on Thunderbird to the max

Lifehacker covers the advantages of IMAP in email and using Thunderbird to handle your GMail account.

Move Outlook files into Thunderbird

Lifehacker reports on a new extension that lets you move your Outlook PST files into Thunderbird.

Thunderbird gets beta of Spicebird to be like Outlook

Lifehacker covers the new Spicebird attempt to give Thunderbird all the functions of Microsoft Outlook.

The article is here.

Google Apps are always online for use

Google Apps Google now has online applications: word-processor, spreadsheet, a basic web page maker, email and calendar, which you can access via your web browser with documents and email stored on a ‘drive’ provided by Google. You will need to register with Google. About 2MB of storage for free, more if you switch to the paid service.

Remember: Google insists on storing your documents themselves, and they have been known to lose data on rare occasions. Also, anything confidential is not a good candidate for storing on someone else’s server (unless encrypted, which this is not). It is vulnerable to a number of people demanding access to your files, with or without your knowledge, and perhaps without the same protection for your data that you prefer.

IM without being specific

If everybody used the same Instant Messaging system, it would be simpler. But we don’t, so
other ways to cover all the systems are available. No matter what systems your friends use, you can still catch all their messages.

• Miranda is an open source (free!) Miranda IM is a smaller, faster, easier instant messenger with support for multiple protocols. Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use while still providing many features including support for AIM, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, and more. Supplemented by hundreds of plugins and other content, Miranda IM is very flexible.
• Trillian for Windows allows users to communicate with AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, and other networks.
• Pidgin (formerly called Gaim) allows non-Windows users to communicate with multiple networks.
• “Use Instant Messaging Without an IM Client: I don’t use IM at all and don’t even have an IM client installed on my PC. On the very rare occasions I do need to send a message I use a free web service from meebo.com. They support a wide range of systems including Yahoo, Messenger, Jabber, AIM, ICQ, MS and more. It also comes in handy for IM users trying to contact friends on incompatible networks. Meebo” — recommended by Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert.Meebo also has the “Meebo Me” widgit for use on web pages, and Meebo Rooms for chat.

Loooonnnnggg URL problems

It’s always a nuisance when you have a really long URL address to send somebody, especially in email, where it so often gets broken into lines and rendered useless.

Next time, try one of these to create a shorter version.

TinyURL and SnipURL take a looonnnggg URL that keeps wrapping to a new line in email (and therefore doesn’t work when recipients click on it) and shorten it down to a version that will fit on one line but expand to work properly when used.  SnipUrl Recommended by PC Annoyances

Bounce spammer email

Bounce Spam Mail sends a fake “bounced” message to make spammer think your email address no longer exists. The advantage is that the spammer will have to remove you from the spam list to avoid getting the bounce messages in the future (s/he thinks). Freeware. Recommended by PC Annoyances. Other software for this use is also available on this page.

The Future of Email or Future Emails?

How can you schedule to send an email for, say, every day for a whole week in advance. There are at least two sites that offer this service for free. Good for sending reminders to yourself, too.

http://futureme.org/

http://www.mailtothefuture.com

(recommended by Gizmo’s Support Alert Newsletter)

Google for Email = Gmail

GMail - Google Email

GMail Google’s GMail is a popular free email system that is accessible from anywhere you connect to the Internet, and has good anti-spam filters too. You’ll need access to a cell phone with text messaging (this is part of keeping out spammers) to receive the confirmation code, but not after that.

To get Gmail on your mobile phone, just go to m.gmail.com on your phone to access your inbox.

Lifehacker has an update on Gmail and a new Better GMail Firefox add-on for it, which adds a menu of the optional features for it.  (Note: the Firefox extension requires you to already have the Greasemonkey add-on installed.)