pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

Protecting Your Email Account

Email is a crucial application in today’s world. It is just as important for personal reasons as it is for business. It is essential in communicating with other people, signing up for events, managing memberships and a host of other reasons. But, email also has security issues if it is not properly protected. A compromised email box can be a security nightmare for an individual or a business. There is so much information in an email box that can wreak havoc if it falls into the wrong hands. But, there are some simple steps anyone can take to make sure their email box is safe from hackers and nefarious individuals.

Use Strong Passwords

You would be surprised how many people use simple, predictable passwords. At times, they are laughable. You do not want to be one of the people using simple passwords because you are just asking for your account to be hacked. Spend a few minutes thinking of a good password. Try to mix it with letters, numbers and special characters. Go a step further and use different passwords for each account that you have. You can use a password manager like Lastpass or Roboform to keep track of all the different websites. Just be sure you set a strong password to those programs as well.

Many emails are offering two-factor authentication as well. Strongly consider this as an options. It is one more step you have to go through to get into your email, but it greatly increases the strength of your password. The way it works, is you will have to enter your usual password. But, then the second step is to identify the actual person entering the password. This is typically done using a token. This is a random number that is generated every 30 seconds to two minutes. Typically these tokens are received in an app on a phone, a text message or a specialized piece of hardware.

Use Different Email Accounts

It may be a good idea to use different email accounts for different areas of your life. Create one for your personal life and one for your work life at the very least. This will keep mail from all different newsletters, friends, coworkers, etc getting comingled inside one email account. Then if the account does get compromised they will have keys to all areas of your life. Having different email accounts can, at the very least, minimize the impact if one of your accounts is taken over.

Be Careful with Links and Attachments

Viruses, malware and spyware can be spread using links and attachments in emails. If you become infected with one of these, you can become a spreader of the virus. But, you can also have your private information exposed to the person distributing the bug. Therefore, it is a good ideas to not click on links or open attachments unless the email is from someone you know and you know they are sending something. Just because you know them does not mean anything because they could be infected and sending you something that is meant to harm. If you receive an email from someone with a link or attachment, follow up with them and make sure they intended to send it.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Articles

Latest Articles

LP to CD Recording

Software to facilitate the digitalisation of analogue music is increasingly widely available. The Windows Sound Recorder is not suitable, since it doesn't allow for recording of more than 60 seconds. The application we're going to use in this tutorial is Audacity. This is quite a sophisticated … [Read More...]

How to Remove Win 7 Security 2011

Easiest Removal Option: Remote Repair: Paying an expert to remove this threat is always the easiest option. It's also the most expensive. PCTechGuide.com has reviewed several remote computer repair companies and we recommend http://www.pcninja.com This is a small computer repair company (Two … [Read More...]

Graphic Card Components

The modern PC graphics card consists of four main components: the graphics processor the video memory the random access memory digital-to-analogue converter (RAMDAC) the driver software The early VGA systems were slow. The CPU had a heavy workload processing … [Read More...]

Artificial Intelligence is Shaping the Solar Energy Field

The global market for solar power is expected to be worth $194.75 billion by 2027. As demand for solar energy solutions rises, solar product … [Read More...]

9 More Great Microsoft Word Hacks to Boost Productivity

We mentioned a few great Microsoft Word hacks in our last post. We wanted to follow up and share some more that can help improve productivity. … [Read More...]

7 Great Microsoft Word Hacks to Bolster Productivity

Today we are going to show you 24 Word tricks to get the most out of this text editor. Although there are many alternatives, Word is still the tool … [Read More...]

The Growing Importance of AI in Forestry Preservation

Artificial Intelligence as a key to environmental and forest industry preservation There are different types of Artificial Intelligence. On the one … [Read More...]

Machine Learning: the Future of the Hotel Industry

Do you operate a hotel chain and want to calculate budgets automatically? Does your hotel need to predict next week's purchase orders or how many … [Read More...]

5 Pieces of Technology to Boost Your Business in 2021

Let’s face it; running a business is not usually easy. Whether you are self-employed and running your own one-person operation or employing many … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

Stay Productive When the Power Goes Out

You have probably been through this scenario before. You are in the middle of work and are in the zone. You may have a deadline to meet. Suddenly, the … [Read More...]

Win98 Installation Planning

A clean install means that you're going to completely wipe your C: drive early in the procedure. You need to be sure that you've figured out how … [Read More...]

Hard Disk OAW Technology

While GMR technology is looking to areal densities of up to 40Gbit/in2 in the next few years, some hard disk … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2021 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors