Ah email, the bane of communication by phone call and snail mail. Even churches are moving to email communication over the traditional forms. Email accounts are also valuable tools for personal finances. Many companies are now willing to email clients their statements and alerts about important account activity.
Free Email Accounts
There are many free email account providers out there. Top names include Google’s Gmail, Yahoo’s Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail accounts. All will ask you to create a unique user ID. Be smart with your ID, don’t use your birth year anywhere in it. Also, keep in mind how you will use your email account. ‘Babycutiecakes@gmail.com’ sounds fun, but might become embarrassing to give out to colleagues or official organizations.
At the bottom of the sign-up forms will be some form of a “Captcha,” a skewed image of a word for you type in, proving you are indeed a human being signing up for an email account. Even I occasionally have problems deciphering the twisted messages. No worries, a wrong answer will usually just give a fresh image, sometimes easier to read.
Using an Email Client
All of the free email accounts are accessible through the web. This is commonly referred to as webmail. You may wish to filter your email through an email client, a software application that downloads your email from the web, and offers you more filtering options. The most popular email clients packaged with Windows are Outlook and Outlook Express. Outlook Express has since been replaced with Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail.
To setup a webmail account into an email client, first make sure the settings for the webmail account allow POP or POP3 access. Next, open the email client you wish to use and elect to add a new email account (typically found under Tools>Accounts). While each email client and webmail provider is slightly different, in general the email client will ask for:
- Your user name or log in to the webmail account. In the above example this is ‘Babycutiecakes@gmail.com’.
- Incoming mail server information. Frequently this is “pop.webmailprovidername.com.” Again, above example would be pop.gmail.com.
- Outgoing mail server information. Usually this is an SMTP server, or “smtp.webmailprovidername.com.” Using gmail, this is smtp.gmail.com.
This information is readily available from your e-mail or Internet Service provider and is usually available online on their support pages.
Junk Mail
The one downside to a free email account is the prevalence of junk mail. Junk mail ranges in danger from the low side of just annoyance to the high side of phishing scams and virus attachments. All the major webmail providers offer junk email protection, with Google having one of the most robust. This is from the sheer number of people using Google’s many Internet services to voluntary report dangerous and annoying mail messages. This isn’t to say threats don’t slip through.
In conjunction with any email account, whether it is a free webmail or an account from your Internet connection provider (like your cable company), all email attachments should be scanned by anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Most malware threats, the files the download to your computer, are completely imperceptible by a user at the time of installation. Spyware tools like Paretologic’s XoftSpySE are vital tools in the war on Internet threats. Don’t allow your email account to become an open door for predators.
Once you have everything setup, you can enjoy the ease and speed of communication. Soon, you will find ways to share favorite photos with your family, stay up on current events, and watch your long distance phone charges shrink and shrink.
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