HOUSECALL information technology

We all have information that we wouldn’t want shared with strangers. Keeping your personal information and passwords private is essential to avoid identity theft, protecting bank accounts – basically maintaining your personal privacy. You wouldn’t leave your bank statements lying in public view, so how can you prevent people from seeing your personal data stored on the Web, your personal computers and computers at work?  The best way to prevent unwanted eyes from seeing your sensitive data is to know where and when it is safe to digitally store your personal information.

Social Networking

First off, social networks are inherently insecure.  Posting to Facebook and other social networks is not necessarily private – even if you keep your account private, people can still view comments you made on your friend’s pages (if their pages are not private). It is not hard to get around the flimsy protections put in place on these sites. Many employers use social networks to gather information about potential employees or partners. Youtube videos are not always private even though you set them as such. Although anonymous account are allowed on many websites, you are not anonymous to the web server hosting your data. Each time you visit a website, your computer’s connection information is stored in the server which can then be traced back to you. Even if you are aware of how to change privacy settings, it is best to err on the side of caution and not post personal information. Overall, the internet, and social networking in particular, is not private. Do not post private information, pictures, or any other type of data that is not meant to be seen by all.

Email Safety

Recently, there have been increased attempts by malicious companies and individuals to get through spam filters.  You may have seen emails from friends or family that contain advertisements. In the past few weeks, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail account credentials have been stolen and then used to send spam emails to the contact lists of those accounts. This is a innovative way to get you to open spam mail, as you will see the message as coming from a trusted source.

If your email account is compromised you will need to take swift measures to protect yourself.  First and most importantly, change the password to your email account and make sure you use a secure password (we recommend a minimum of 8 characters containing letters, numbers, symbols, and capitals).  Next run a malware scan program (like Malwarebytes) on the computers you use to access the compromised account. Malware is often designed to harvest passwords and personal information from your computer, so if you don’t get rid of it the attackers will be able to compromise you again.  While there is certainly cause for alarm, there is no need to panic; most often passwords are compromised by hackers stealing them main authentication database of your email provider.

Do not open attachments in emails unless you know the source and know that it is not malicious. It never hurts to email the sender back and confirm that the attachment is legitimate. Also be careful of links that you receive in emails. If you hover the mouse over a link such as this http://google.com you will notice that the link may not be what it seems. The true link is the one displayed when you hover your mouse over the blue text.

What Can Be Done to Protect your Information?
Be careful supplying personal information to anyone on line. Unless you trust a site, don’t give your address, password, or credit card information. Look for indications that the site uses SSL to encrypt your information (if they do the URL will start with https:// – notice the s). Although some sites require you to supply your social security number (such as those associated with financial transactions for loans or credit cards), be especially wary of providing this information online. A final method of attack is through browser cookies which temporarily store data so that you don’t have to keep typing in your info over and over. If an attacker can access your computer, he or she may be able to find personal data stored in cookies. However, you can limit the use of cookies with just a few simple changes to your browser settings. Be careful which websites you visit; if it seems suspicious, leave!  The longer you linger the more time malicious individuals have to compromise your computer.   Finally be diligent about keeping your virus definitions up to date, scanning your computer for spyware regularly, and make sure you have the latest security patches from the manufacturer.

Most companies and organizations have a set limit on how much space you are allotted for email. Combine that with many people wanting to save every email they ever send or receive (you never know when you’re going to need to dig it back up) and the stacks of email that a person usually gets in the average business day and mailboxes can fill up very quickly. This article is going to focus on checking your inbox size, archiving and sorting your email in Outlook and Entourage. If you’re looking to clear out your gmail inbox, here are two great articles, one from lifehacker and one from web worker daily, on giving your gmail a fresh start.

Outlook

Outlook allows you to archive and sort emails by using personal folders, which are also known as archive folders and PSTs. The terms personal folders, archive folders and PSTs are terms that can be used interchangeably, so for simplicity we will refer to them as personal folders.

To create a set of personal folders in Outlook, go to the File menu, select New, and click Outlook Data File. You will be given a choice between two types of files. Chose Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst). Click OK. You are then given an option of where you would like your personal folders to live. If you have space on a server, it’s a good idea to put your personal folders file there. Click on My Computer to see a list of drives available. When you’ve chosen, click OK.

Next you will be asked to name your personal folders. You can pick any name for them you’d like and you can always change the name later. Here you can add a password if you’d like, but it’s not recommended. If you lose your personal folder’s password it is difficult to recover. When you’re finished click OK.

Your personal folders will appear on the left of Outlook under your mailbox folders with the name you chose. Click the + sign to expand the folders. Here you can add more folders to organize your email. Right click and select New Folder.

Name your folder. Under “select where to put this folder” you can choose which folder you’d like to contain your new folder. The folder you right clicked to create a new folder will be the default.

Now you can archive your emails. There are two ways to do this. One option is to manually chose what emails you want to archive. In this method you drag and drop your emails directly into your personal folders. Doing one email at a time would take forever, but you can select multiple emails at once with the control (ctrl) and shift keys.

The ctrl key lets you select emails individually. Just hold down the ctrl key and select emails, then drag them into your personal folders.

The shift key selects a set of emails in a row. Select the first email you want to move, then hold down the shift key and select the last email. All the emails in-between will be selected and you can move them into your personal folders.

Your second option is AutoArchiving. To setup your AutoArchive settings, to go the tools menu, click options, and click the other tab. Click AutoArchive.

Here you can edit the auto archive settings. Choose how often you want the auto-archive to run. We recommend checking the box next to Prompt Before AutoArchive Runs so that you will know when AutoArchive is running and you can cancel it before it begins. Make sure the following boxes are checked: Archive or Delete Old Items, Show Archive Folder in Folder List, and Move Old Items to. Click the Browse button to navigate to the personal folders file you created earlier. Note that when you AutoArchive items it will create folders in your personal folders that are identical to the folders you are archiving from. So if you just have an Inbox and a Sent Items folder it will create a folder called Inbox and a folder called Sent Items in your personal folders. You can click the Run AutoArchive Now button to auto archive your files immediately.

You can also use rules to automatically archive emails when they come into your inbox. This is helpful if you belong to a mailing list or subscribe to a newsletter. See our blog entry on Outlook rules for more information.

Entourage

Archiving emails in Entourage is incredibly simple. First, expand the section under your inbox called On My Computer by clicking the triangle next to it. You can drag emails into the inbox or sent items folders here, or you can create your own folders. Create your own folders by right clicking or holding down the control key and clicking On My Computer and selecting New Subfolder.

You can create as many subfolders within subfolders as you would like.

There is no AutoArchive option for Entourage but you can move emails over manually. The command and shift keys help you select multiple emails at once:

The command key lets you select emails individually. Just hold down the command key and select emails, then drag them into your personal folders.

The shift key selects a set of emails in a row. Select the first email you want to move, then hold down the shift key and select the last email. All the emails in-between will be selected and you can move them into your personal folders.

There are many different methods for organizing your email once your folders are created. You can choose to have a different personal folder for each year, or you can have different folders for projects you are working on. Another option is the trusted trio method from LifeHacker. How you sort your email is up to you.

Having an organized inbox is just as important as keeping a clean workspace. But, if you’re getting hundreds of emails daily, it can be difficult to find time to sort through your many messages. Outlook and other email applications can help you keep your inbox tidy and highlight the important information with rules.

In Outlook, rules are a set of conditions, actions, and exceptions that process and organize messages automatically. Rules are completely customizable to your specific needs and can do many functions that help organize, customize and clean your mailbox. To create a rule for your mailbox, look in the tools menu bar for “Rules and Alerts” and open it. Here, Outlook lets you decide whether to create a rule using a pre-created template or to create a new rule from scratch. While the pre-created templates can be useful, creating a rule from scratch gives you the most flexibility and is what we recommend.

Since there are countless options for creating a rule, we will use an example to explain the process:

Say you want to create a rule that will automatically put all the emails you receive with the word “finance” in the subject into a folder labeled “Financial Information” in your personal folders. Find where it says “Start from a blank rule.” Then choose “Check messages when they arrive.” This tells Outlook to check the emails you receive as opposed to the ones you send. Click next. Check the box next to “with specific words in the subject.” Here you’re telling Outlook to look in the subject line for a specific word or phrase. Other options include looking for emails sent from a specific person, or sent to a certain email address—if you want to sort out emails that are sent to a distribution list you’re on. By clicking the blue underlined “specific words” at the bottom of the page it will let you customize which words you want to specify. Type in “finance” and click add. Now this rule will run on any email that arrives in your inbox with the word finance in the subject. Click OK to return to the previous box and click next.

Now you will designate what you want done with the emails. Check the box next to “move it to the specified folder.” You will need to specify which folder to send it to by clicking on “specified” at the bottom of the dialogue box. Choose the folder in the personal folders labeled “Financial Information” (you will need to create the folder you want the messages to go in beforehand) and click OK to set that option and then click next. This brings us to the exceptions. For the example, we’ll say that you would like this rule only to apply to those messages sent directly to me, if you are being CC’ed they will stay in your Inbox. Choose the box next to “except where my name is in the CC box” and hit next. The rule is now set up! You can now decide whether to run this rule on the emails in that are already in your inbox. This will move any emails in your inbox that follow the rule into the specified folder. You can also choose to turn on or leave it off for the time being. Rules and alerts are only active if they are checked in the “Rules and Alerts” box and the rules you set up will only be active when your Outlook is open.

There are many rules and alerts to customize and we suggest that you utilize this feature to improve efficiency and minimize your workload. For more information and tips on using rules, check out Tips for Managing Your E-Mail Using Rules from Microsoft Office Online.

Please contact us for assistance or further information for other email applications, including Entourage, Apple Mail, etc.