Nytrix Help Page
Email and the headaches that go with it
Oh, that darn email! It consumes way too much of our time. Many of us may be better off without it. Most of us need it and rely on it. So let's just deal with it.
Below are some of my suggestions for handling email. As usual, take it or leave it.
Sending emails to multiple recipients
So you receive an email that has a whole bunch of other recipient's names or email addresses in the "To" field. You say to yourself, "Self, why are all these names here and why the heck did I get this crap?" You will find your name somewhere buried in the list. The question is, does the sender know that he/she is broadcasting all of these email addresses to the whole world?
Newsflash: email is NOT secure and there are technical ways to intercept email and harvest the addresses.
Here is one solution: Instead of using the "To" field, type ALL of the recipient's email addresses into the "BCC" (Blind Carbon Copy) field. Not the "CC" field. The email recipient will not see any of the other recipient's names. If you are using Microsoft Outlook to send the message, the recipients will see your email address in the "To" field. If you are using Microsoft Outlook Express, the recipients will see "Undisclosed-Recipient". Not ideal, but much better.
Now, if you want to make it better, create a new Contact with a name such as "Multiple Recipients from yourname" that you would like to appear in the "To" field. Put your email address in as this new contact's email address. When you create a new email to send to multiple people, put this new contact name in the "To" field and all the other email addresses into the BCC field (as stated above). The recipients will all receive emails with the new contact's name in the "To" field and you will receive the copy that was sent to the new contact because it has your email address in it. You can certainly test this by sending an email to yourself. Pretty cool.
Note: The BCC field may not show on some email screens. Look in the options or preferences to enable the display of the BCC field. It's there; look for it.
More stuff - Handling Spam
POP3 - What is a POP3 email account? It's better than plain old webmail. You can take it's settings and put them into your Outlook or Outlook Express program and have a whole lot better control of your mail including the handling of spam.
Spam - How do you stop spam from clogging up your mailbox? You pretty much can't. Or can you? Span filters work somewhat, but have a tendency to filter legit mail also.
I suggest using a good FREE spam filter program, such as K9, to flag the nasty emails as spam. Then use Outlook's built-in Rules Wizard to take that spam (or possible spam) and shove it somewhere or automatically delete it. I have this system pretty well perfected and it works great. I let everything come thru and handle it locally so I don't accidentally lose emails.
If you want a copy of my Rules Wizard, send me an email.
Don't do this. . .
Don't ever click on any attachment sent to you from Microsoft. It's a virus! Microsoft NEVER sends an email attachment. These bogus emails are very cleverly crafted and look legit; they are not.
Don't send full-sized pictures to anyone unless they really want the original full-size picture (or you don't like that person). Those 8-megapixel pictures that your new handy-dandy digital camera takes are just great for printing a nice high-resolution picture, but are bad news for email. Send low-resolution pictures. Say, maybe 640 x 480 pixels, or so. Yes, you have to convert/resize them before you send them.
Don't type everything in capital letters. It's common knowledge that this practice is the equivalent of swearing. Whoa!
