Hosting, hosting and more hosting!

June 22, 2025 Dave Leave a comment

Many people know the story of the Mars Climate Orbiter that crashed due to a difference in units used by two pieces of software. It’s important when communicating that everyone (or every piece of software) is able to communicate accurately so that mistakes don’t happen.

The Internet is by its nature technical. As such some of the terms that are used can be confused or misused. Sometimes small details can be the difference between something working or not working, or in the case of terminology a problem being understood or misunderstood.

One of the words we often use at Runbox that can cause confusion is “hosting”. There are different kinds of hosting and some sound similar or can easily be misunderstood.

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Mobile phone with Runbox progressive mobile app login screen on a desk

Runbox Mobile App (PWA)

May 27, 2025 Andersen

The Runbox app is a Progressive Web App (PWA)—a modern approach to webmail that brings you a fast, app-like experience directly through your phone or tablet. Built using open web technologies, the Runbox PWA delivers the convenience of a mobile app without needing to visit an app store.

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Choose Your Perfect Email Domain Name with Runbox

April 30, 2025 Andersen Leave a comment

With Runbox, you can choose from a wide range of domain names to craft an email address that’s uniquely yours. Whether for personal or professional use, select a domain that complements your name, reflects your brand, highlights your location, or showcases your personality. Make a lasting impression with an email that truly stands out.

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Reboot Your Digital Life: Tidy Up Your Tech for the New Year

January 10, 2025 Andersen Leave a comment

January is often a time when we reassess and reorganize. After the holiday rush and the chaos of the previous year, the start of a new year feels like the perfect moment to take a step back and refocus. For many of us, this often means decluttering our physical spaces—cleaning out closets, sorting through old items, and clearing off countertops. But what about our digital lives?

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Spam in Reverse: When Your Email Client Gets It Wrong

October 29, 2024 Andersen

Spam these days is no joke. Keeping our inboxes tidy can feel like a full-time job, and just when you think you’ve got it under control, an unexpected twist occurs: legitimate emails end up in your Junk folder. Yes, we’re talking about the moment when you realize important messages are hiding away in spam purgatory, thanks to email clients like Apple Mail, Outlook and Thunderbird.

Last week we wrote about a dual spam filter approach using email clients and how to set this up. We also talk about how spam has increased dramatically lately, and the reasons why. Here we look at how legitimate emails can end up in the Junk folder

The Frustration of Missing Emails

We’ve all been there. You’re expecting an important email, maybe a project update or a message from a friend, and it never arrives. You check your inbox—nothing. You start to wonder if they even sent it. Then, on a whim, you dive into your Junk folder, and there they are. Emails you thought were lost, marked as spam by your email client.

But it gets even more frustrating. Sometimes you have already filtered these emails specifically. You added them on your allowlist (what we used to call whitelist) in your Runbox Webmail, meaning you’ve already done the work to ensure they reach your inbox. So, why does your email client override your careful training and send them to Junk anyway?

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Managing Unwanted Email: A Dual Filter Approach Using Email Clients

October 25, 2024 Andersen

Many of us continue to face a frustrating challenge: an overwhelming influx of spam emails. This is when spam is more than just a nuisance – it becomes a real problem. Why are some inboxes inundated with spam? We look at why it’s happening and what you can do about it.

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Plus-addressing lets you create an alias on the fly

September 5, 2024 Andersen Leave a comment

Email aliases are great – they help organize emails, reduce spam and protect our identity. But sometimes we need a quick way to create an alias without having to log in to our account to set it up. That’s when we can use plus-addressing, or subaddressing.

You simply add a + to your email address followed by a tag.

For example, if your email address is bob@nullrunbox.com, you can create a tag bob+shopping@nullrunbox.com, or bob+news@nullrunbox.com. You can use any tag, and make up as many as you like.

Any email sent to a plus-address is delivered to your account as usual. The message is still addressed to the plus-address, and you can use this in various ways to manage your email.

Plus-addressing benefits

Make up addresses on the fly without having to set anything up in your Runbox account.
Works with any email address, alias or domain.
Use a plus-address to identify sites where you used your email address.
Plus-addresses can help hide your main email address.
Use a different tag for each site so that if one has a data leak you know which one it is.
Filter email to specific folders based on the plus-addressing.
Create a filter to delete email to that particular plus address if it starts receiving spam.

Plus-addressing and email aliases are great tools to manage your email. With a Runbox account you get unlimited plus-addressing and 100 email aliases. If you have your own domain name, you get unlimited aliases. Check out this post for more info about aliases.

You can get more details about plus-addressing here.

To learn about how to create email aliases, check out this blog post.

If you need help, contact Runbox Support.

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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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hands typing on laptop and emails floating

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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Using Runbox aliases

September 6, 2018 Dave 9 Comments

It’s been a while since we wrote about one of the most useful Runbox features — aliases!

Aliases are a great way to organise your email, and also a very useful tool in avoiding too many problems making changes if an email address starts to receive more unsolicited or spam email than it is easy to deal with.

Aliases

Aliases are alternative email addresses for your Runbox account that deliver mail to your existing Inbox, the same Inbox your main username delivers message to. You can send and receive mail using an alias and nobody other than you need know that it is an alias. You will see aliases listed in the Compose window if you are using our webmail, and if you are using an email program you can usually set them up in the account settings.

Using your aliases

Many people use aliases to separate mail to/from different groups of people, or to separate business and personal use. You can even use filters to automatically move incoming mail addressed to aliases to specific folders in your account.

When you sign up for online accounts of different kinds (e.g. online shopping, forums, finance etc.) you could use a different alias for each account. You can use more important aliases for organisations where you feel your information is more secure, and other aliases, that you might consider throwaway addresses, for less reputable websites.

Unsolicited/spam mail

You may not be able to tell if a website is reputable or not, but if you use aliases for different kinds of use and you start getting too much unsolicited email to one or more of them, the easier option might be to decide not to use a particular alias any longer and to replace it with another one.

Abandoning an address and deleting the alias is one way to make sure it can’t receive email, but if it is your only or main email address this could mean telling friends, family, work colleagues and a whole list of websites you new address. However, if the address is an alias and you only use it for a small number of websites then it is easier to justify deleting the alias as it is less effort to set up a new alias on those websites

Setting up aliases

Runbox provides all customers with 100 aliases for their account, regardless of their plan choice. Aliases can be set up and managed by going to Account >> Aliases.

Aliases are not forwarding addresses, and forwarding can be achieved using filters. However, to allow certain combinations of Runbox accounts to work together we have made it possible for aliases to deliver messages to another Runbox account other than the account they are created on.

When you delete an alias it is permanently reserved for your account, and you can always add it back to the account that it was originally set up on. That way, you can temporarily disable an alias by deleting it, and then reinstate it at a later time.