Archives - Email


Feeling tracked by emails – disable those hidden spies

Ever wonder if email marketers track whether you open their messages? Tiny, hidden images called tracking pixels do just that. They’re like invisible spies, reporting back to marketers if you’ve opened their emails. While this helps them send “relevant” emails, it can feel creepy. So, how to stop them? Two ways to fight back: Remember: […]

What’s a denial-of-service attack?

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack occurs when genuine users are unable to access information systems, devices, or other network resources due to the activities of a malicious cyber threat actor. Services affected may involve email, websites, online accounts (e.g., banking), or other services that rely on the affected computer or network. A denial-of-service is accomplished by […]

Don’t open that .zip attachment

Email attachments are to some degree unavoidable in normal personal and business communications. However, it’s a good idea to minimize your exposure. Don’t open any attachments from people not in your contacts list, and ask senders if they can share the document via a cloud link instead (much safer).

Do not send personally identifiable information via standard email

There’s no undoing an email (with limited exceptions if you’re in an Microsoft Exchange environment). Plus, email security is not as strong as you might expect, especially if you aren’t using email encryption. For these reasons, never give out your sensitive data in an email.

Use cloud sharing instead of attachments when possible

Email attachments are ubiquitous, but risky – you never know what they might include. It’s usually safer to share content via links to cloud services, since you’re not actually downloading anything onto your system.

Set up email filters to keep risky messages at bay

All major consumer email services offer filtering options, with which you can choose what happens to any message that’s from a specific sender and/or contains a particular subject line or words. For example, you can immediately archive any email with “deal” or “unsubscribe” in its body. This can help you weed out risky messages without […]