Gmail is usually pretty good at stopping spam from reaching my inbox. When it slips up, it reminds me of just how terrifying the modern internet is. Early one morning, I received this email from someone I know (details redacted by me). It came from his email, it has his signature at the bottom. This doesn't look like someone hijacking his email so far. I don't put much stock by "Protected…
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For many years, my email footer said "Sent via my Casio cPhone" - my attempt to poke fun at the users who hadn't updated their iPhone's default email signature. This leads to an interesting question: Marc Blank-Settle @bbcmarc on Threads@MarcSettleIs there an easy way to see what device an email is sent from? If I type the attached on an email on my PC, can the truth be shown easily?…
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We all know what an email address looks like and how to validate them, right? A few years ago I got the Chinese domain name 莎士比亚.org. You can browse to it, link to it, and send email to it. Or can you? When I tried two years ago, none of the major email providers supported sending to non-ASCII email addresses. Today, I tried again with six of the big "Western" webmail providers. How did they…
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I had dinner with the outgoing editor of The Guardian the other night. Clever chap, sure he'll go far in life. The Guardian is very hot on security. Many of their writers have PGP keys which they publicly advertise. In theory, that's great (complaints about PGP notwithstanding) - but the reality shows just how tricky it is to act in a security conscious manner. Have a look at Alan's Twitter…
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Does your email suck? Chris Woods has some suggestions on how to fix it. Check out his Better Emails tool for Outlook. 🔊 Better Emails🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. Get About A Minute as soon as each episode goes live. Stick this Podcast Feed into your podcatcher Or you can Subscribe on iTunes Intro music "Gran Vals" performed by Brian Streckfus. Stopwatch Icon by Ils…
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Hanlon's Razor states, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It would be nice to think that all mistakes and errors we encounter are just the result of bone-headedness. Sadly, that's not the case. Quite often malicious people deliberately try to trick you into taking actions you would normally have ignored. In usability, we call this a "Dark Pattern". A …
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As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm sick of people not being able to spell or pronounce shkspr.mobi correctly. So I've decided to double down and start using my alternate domain 莎士比亚.org. It's pronounced "Sha-shi-bi-ya", if that helps. Getting my email account set up with my hosting provider was easy enough but it turned out to be quite tricky to send email to my account. This is what happe…
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I was listening to a podcast recently which was kind enough to mention one of my blog posts. The presenter said: ...and you should Google for this, because I'm really not sure how to pronounce this. Is it shu-huk-spur? dot mobby? Le sigh! It's a conversation I have most weeks when I'm on the phone to someone - usually a call centre - and they ask for my email address. "Sierra Hotel Kilo…
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Like many people, I used to be a slave to my work inbox. It's hard to maintain a decent work/life balance when you're receiving business emails during evenings and weekends. Sometimes it's due to a workaholic colleague, or someone in a different timezone, or just those damned automated reminders from the finance system. I don't want to carry a separate device, and I know I can't rely on…
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I spent several hours in school learning how to write a letter. From the correct placement of the address, right down to the "Yours sincerely / faithfully" - every aspect was drummed into me. That never happened with email. Judging from many of the people I work with - young and old - the art of writing an email has not been adequately explained. I want to take a few moments to explain how I …
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As with most tasks in life, there are two paths you can go by - the easy way, or the right way. Sadly, many of us choose the easy way which, in the long run, means more work for us all. Take, for example, the seemingly dull task of email unsubscription. A developer wants to make it easy for a user to unsubscribe from an email newsletter. They want to place an unsubscribe link at the bottom of …
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For the last few years, I've been trying to opt out of having any postal mail sent to me. Wherever a company offers online billing - I sign up in a flash. My insurance company are now bored of me saying "rather than posting the policy - can you email it to me instead?" I've opted-out of receiving unaddressed mail and I've signed up to stop junk mail. Mostly, I'm pleased to say, it has worked. …
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