I’m currently tweaking the new theme which takes more time than I thought. I just want to apologize for the lack of articles in the last days. Once the new theme is published I will have more time to write articles again.

I have been writing about temporary (disposable) email services before which can be used to register to certain web services without revealing your true email address. This is great if you do not want to risk that the website is selling your email address.

This is however a security risk if you do register at a service that is sending passwords to the email again if you have forgotten them. Everyone who knows the email that you have registered with could use the forgotten password request to get your password.

Tags: disposable email, mailinator, one way email, throwaway email
Categories: Email

You can bet that every tiny bit of new information about Google or one of their services will make headline news in a matter of minutes after it was discovered or announced. This time it was the discovery that the maximum attachment size for emails on gmail has been raised to 20 Megabytes.

While a 100% increase may seem nice it raises some questions about the usefulness of such an increase. Many mail servers will not accept emails of that size and bounce them back. It should also be noted that emails were never supposed to be used for large file transfers in the first place.

Tags: attachment size, gmail, google gmail
Categories: Email

The Contacts Sidebar extension for the email software Mozilla Thunderbird displays the address book – or books – in the sidebar of Thunderbird beneath the mail folders. A real beauty is that this sidebar can be enabled and disabled with the F4 button which means that you only need to display it when you need the address book. All the possibilities of the address book are given in the sidebar as well, you can edit properties of your contacts or quickly choose a contact that you want to write a mail to. Here are some highlights taken from the description:

Tags: contacts sidebar, firefox-extensions, mozilla, thunderbird
Categories: Email, The Web

It happens sometimes that you find duplicate mails in your inbox in Thunderbird. This could happen for instance when you pull new emails from the mail server and get disconnected during that process. It could happen then that those emails will be retrieved again when you check for mails. Thunderbird has a nice hidden variable that defines how it should treat duplicate mails and I’m going to tell you how to set it correctly so that duplicate mails are removed automatically.

Tags: duplicate emails, Email, thunderbird
Categories: Email, Knowledge

I have been using the anti-spam software Spamihilator when I was still using Opera Mail for my mail accounts. Spamihilator basically sits between your mail program and the Internet mail server analyzing all incoming mail. Spam mails will not be send to the mail client but remain in Spamihilator where you could delete them or mark them as free of spam. One great feature of Spamihilator is that you can install plugins that add functionality.

Tags: anti-spam, antispam software, spam plugins, spamihilator
Categories: Email, Security

I have added a “send attachment” entry to my right-click context menu when I perform that action on files. Adding attachments to emails was always sort of a burden for me because it was really uncomfortable to open the mail program, click on the attachment button and browse to the file on the hard drive of the computer. A far better way is to right-click the file and select an entry that would automatically open the email program. All that was left to do from this point on was to fill out the email address and write the mail.

Tags: attachment context menu, mail tips, outlook, send attachment, thunderbird
Categories: Email, Operating Systems, Windows

Many Internet users do not realize how dangerous Phishing can be. They receive a email which claims to be from their bank and they blindly trust everything that is written in that mail and will click on any links that are displayed in that mail to “update” their security software or passwords. They are usually redirected to sites that password fish their passwords and use them to make online transactions. I’m always astonished by the amount of users that want to do online banking for instance on the Internet but lack basic security knowledge.

Tags: anti-phishing, delphish, microsoft outlook, phishing, phishing extension, thunderbird
Categories: Email, Security