Google email account

archieboy

Hope I'm in the right forum for this query. I'm planning to cancel my BT broadband account in a couple of months when my contract is up - haven't decided who to go with yet, any advice on that?
My main question, however was should I think about getting a google email account now and if I use that I wouldn't have to have the trouble of notifying everyone each time I change servers but could just keep the google one. Is there any disadvantage in this such as security issues with the google one? Thanks for any help.

Farway

Another alternative you could consider is buying a cheap domain name from someone like 123 http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ and using their mail forwarding option, thus to your friends you will always be yourname@archieboy.org.uk for instance

The beauty of this is you can have loads of mail accounts, so one for Tesco, one for Martin, one for pub, one for likely spammer

Should you change ISP in future just redirect to new mail, or even your Google mail

Guys_Dad

archieboy wrote: »

Hope I'm in the right forum for this query. I'm planning to cancel my BT broadband account in a couple of months when my contract is up - haven't decided who to go with yet, any advice on that?
My main question, however was should I think about getting a google email account now and if I use that I wouldn't have to have the trouble of notifying everyone each time I change servers but could just keep the google one. Is there any disadvantage in this such as security issues with the google one? Thanks for any help.

I would suggest a googlemail account for genuine friends and family and then an ovi.com or hotmail one for purchases or similar. Spam should then hit your 2nd acount, although to be sure choose a really hard to guess account name for your google login as I am spammed like crazy as I was an early googlemail user and actually got my first name/surname as my login.

I rate googlemail, particularly if you configure it properly. You can access it from any internet cafe or ISP no bother - except China ??????????;)

PlutoinCapricorn

You can have more than one googlemail account, or there is a useful facility whereby you can put +xxx for each company that you register with. This will help to identify the source of spammers I have been using gmail for more than one year now and have NEVER had any real spam as they are good at catching the worst cases.

jem16

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

or there is a useful facility whereby you can put +xxx for each company that you register with.

Can you elaborate on this please?

PlutoinCapricorn

Certainly!

Say he creates a new google account: archieboy@googlemail.com

This is the address that he gives to family etc.

He tells Amazon that his email address is [EMAIL="archieboy+amaz@googlemail.com"]archieboy+amaz@googlemail.com[/EMAIL]
He tells Dixons that his email address is [EMAIL="archieboy+dix@googlemail.com"]archieboy+dix@googlemail.com[/EMAIL]
and so on: just put something memorable and suitable after the plus sign.

All messages will come into the same inbox, and will show where they came from. If he gets a spam from the first one, he can tell that Amazon must have passed on his address.

I learned about the plus sign from MSE; I have given it a go and it works,

jem16

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

I learned about the plus sign from MSE; I have given it a go and it works,

Thanks. That sounds useful.

archieboy

Thanks for the advice. I'm not very sure how the domain name actually works - I'm not very computer/internet literate! The idea of the +company name with google mail sounds useful. What do you do if spam does come in? Can it be stopped? Do you just complain to the company it came from.

kwikbreaks

Gmail has a pretty effective spam filter. If you get some spam just mark it as such (there is a dedicated button) and anything from the same source will go directly to the spam folder in future.

It is pointless complaining about spam - it's a fact of life and virtually always the source address has been spoofed anyway.

PlutoinCapricorn

I never get any real spam: google seems to filter out the worst examples at source, so I never see them. I give my email address to as few companies as possible, and only well-known ones so perhaps | am not selected for spam.

Occasionally I see a message in my spam folder from Amazon or similar: for some reason google sees something in the title that makes it think it is spam, perhaps it is a mass mailing, but at least it gets through.

I used to be with BT; although I have cancelled my landline they have not taken away my BTINTERNET address despite a final warning.

johno43

Recently started to use Gmail. Regarding Googlemail and security I notice that now they use HTTPS by default. You see the padlock in the address bar so I reckon its as secure as it can be.