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Updated 11/15/23:

Here are some of the best methods to reduce the amount of spam/junk email in your Inbox:

• Use an email service with good junk/spam email filtering. Gmail is our favorite free email service that does a pretty good job at segregating important email from spam, as well as promotional, social, and any other emails you want to filter out of you main Inbox.
• Unsubscribe from specific emails only after you’ve verified that they are from a legitimate sender.
• For any obvious junk/spam email that arrives in your Inbox, report it as spam/junk – but don’t unsubscribe if your email service offers a setting to do so.
• Don’t react to junk/spam email by clicking links or replying. Just delete it.
• Use different email addresses or aliases and/or different email services to segregate personal emails, email addresses you use for banks and financial institutions, travel confirmations, newsletters, etc. Google’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook.com all offer such features.
• Use a strong, unique password and enable 2-step verification for your email account so that hackers can’t access your account and steal your contacts list among other dangers.
• When addressing email to multiple recipients, use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) so that you’re not inadvertently sharing people’s private email addresses with others. Also, compose descriptive subjects so that spam filters and the recipient can tell whether or not your email is spam.
• Realize that you cannot prevent all junk email. The longer you have an email address and the more people and businesses that it is given to, the more junk email you will likely receive over time.

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Updated 10/18/23 to include other accounts besides email.

You may have signed up for your email account long ago – before additional account recovery information was required. If you get locked out of your email account tomorrow, does your account have enough account recovery information to allow you to easily reset your password and get back into your account?

Account recovery information includes other methods to confirm your identity including:

• A mobile phone number that can receive a text message
• A secondary email address
• Account security questions – i.e. “your first pet’s name”

This year we’ve had several clients get permanently locked out of their AT&T/Yahoo email and other accounts because there wasn’t enough secondary verifiable information to convince the customer support representative to reset the password. Don’t let that happen to you. Log into your email account today – before a hacker does – to update your profile information with a cell phone number that can receive one-time-password verification text messages. Alternatively or additionally you could provide a secondary email address or setup account security questions/answers. If available, setup 2-Step Verification – sometimes called Multi-Factor Authentication – for even better protection.

Don’t forget to secure your other accounts

While you’re securing your email account, we also recommend securing your other accounts that could be accessed by hackers. Those accounts include:

• Wireless cell phone account and number
• Bank and brokerage accounts where funds could be transferred out by a scammer
• Social media accounts where someone could take over your identity to scam your friends and family
• Your Microsoft, Apple and/or Google accounts which are used to login to your computer or mobile device

To secure your accounts as mentioned above, once logged into one of your online accounts, look for a section called profile or security to make the changes and additions. Instructions for some common accounts include:

• Microsoft
• Google
• AT&T
• Yahoo
• Facebook
• Amazon

If you need help, contact us for a security checkup of all of your vulnerable online accounts.

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If you have a free Yahoo or AT&T/Yahoo email account and use the forwarding feature to send your email to another email address (i.e. username@gmail.com), you may have noticed that forwarding stopped in January 2021.

As Yahoo’s help article explains, you can upgrade and pay for the ability to forward your email again. Alternatively you can use a feature in Gmail and other email services to check emails from Yahoo (or other) accounts and bring them into your favorite email service automatically.

Also see: Why you should ditch your internet service provider’s email service.

Though we typical help people with their computers and internet service, we frequently get asked about canceling TV service and switching to streaming – aka TV via the internet. Consumer Reports recently published some helpful and informative articles about canceling your TV service. Some of those articles include:

• Finding a Channel Could Get Confusing If You Switch to a Cable-Replacement Service
• The Cord-Cutting Decision Is Tougher These Days. Here’s What You Need to Know
• Cable vs. Streaming Live TV Services: Which Should You Choose?

Also read: Why you shouldn’t bundle all of your services with one provider

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