Using Email Aliases to Combat Spam and Protect Your Identity

August 29, 2024 Andersen Leave a comment

Do you use email aliases? Aliases are a great tool that can help protect your identity, reduce spam, and organize your inbox.

Aliases are alternative email addresses that you can use to separate emails. Instead of using the same address for everything, you set up different aliases for online subscriptions, registrations, newsletters, social media, business contacts and so on. Any category that works for you. You can use your main address for friends and family, or create another alias.

All your aliases are set up under your main email account, and is delivered to your primary inbox. You can even set up filters so that mail is separated into specific folders in your account.

Not only will aliases give you another layer of anonymity, it also gives you control over your information and makes online tracking more difficult. Having aliases can help prevent someone hacking your main email account, and helps protect you from phishing attacks. If one of your aliases starts to receive lots of spam, you can easily delete the alias and set up a new one.

Benefits of using email aliases

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Privacy Matters – How Our Personal Data Is Used

August 17, 2024 Andersen 1 Comment

When we go online or use apps, we are being tracked. Companies collect our personal data by tracking us across the web sites we visit. They build profiles on us based on our browsing history and online behavior. They want to sell us their products and services, and the more they know about us the better they can use this data to manipulate our behavior.

You know those ads that pop up everywhere after you looked up something? After you’ve looked up a new car, car ads follow you around all day. You research a vacation to Alaska, and travel ads show up everywhere. This is the result of targeted advertising, which is based on data they collected on you. Some call it surveillance capitalism, and it’s big business.

Privacy is about how your data is collected, processed, stored and used. It’s about maintaining control over your personal information and your identity. Privacy isn’t about hiding secrets, it’s about keeping your personal information safe from people who can do harm.

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Got hacked? What to do if your email account has been compromised.

July 27, 2024 Andersen Leave a comment

Suddenly you are noticing strange things happening with your email. You’re receiving email messages about login attempts, password resets and two-factor authentication codes, and your friends and family are wondering why you’re sending them weird emails. You can’t even log in to your own email account and you’ve been bumped out of your social media accounts. What is going on? Your email might have been hacked.

Don’t panic… but act quickly. You can minimize a lot of damage if you act fast and methodically. Because your email is a gateway to all your online accounts, like banking, shopping, social media and streaming, it can potentially be a goldmine for a cyber criminal if they gain access. Here’s what you can do.

The signs that your email has been hacked

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Why am I getting so many spam emails?

July 15, 2024 Andersen Leave a comment

You may have noticed that you’re getting a lot more spam email lately, which is frustrating and annoying. You diligently go through these emails and add them to your Spam filter, you block the sender, unsubscribe from mailing lists and so on. The spam emails keep coming…

Why it’s happening

When we sign up for web sites we effectively give them permission to use our email. These companies may sell your email address to other companies who will in turn send you spam.
Whenever there is a data breach on a website where you have subscribed to something, email addresses can be repeatedly sold to other spammers. You can check if your email has been been in a breach here: https://haveibeenpwned.com
Spammers use mechanisms that allow their emails to go through the spam filter. They will use valid email addresses such as a @gmail account, create look-alike domains that will look like a legitimate company, or even spoof your own email address because many people whitelist their own address.
Because of AI, spammers and phishers can very quickly create mass campaigns. Previously, spam was often easily spotted because of bad grammar and lack of personalization (goodbye Nigerian prince). Now, spammers use artificial intelligence to make spam and phishing more convincing, and they use social media, online behavior and public information to generate personalized campaigns. The result is that we are bombarded with spam.

What you can do

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