Friday, November 4, 2011

COMMUNICATION TIPS...ORGANISE AND PROTECT E-MAILS

SPAMBOTS MAKE management of messages an impossible task every day.
Here is how you can reduce the pain with simple steps to manage emails and keep them secure.


1. Sort Mails Right Away


The ‘I’ll deal with this later’ attitude often overloads your inbox in the first place. Deal with important messages and discard the rest as soon as possible. “My inbox looks and feels cleaner after I got into a habit of sorting messages quickly”, says Alok Sabde, business associate and software developer at TCS.


2. Group Similar Emails


Create folders and set rules for them so that emails directly land in designated folders. Set up filters for all your ‘service announcement’ emails, like Facebook and Twitter notifications or RSS feeds. “I maintain multiple folders and apply filters for routine emails like bank alerts, industry news etc, so my inbox holds only critical emails. I also use multiple devices to stay connected to make sure all my important emails are answered,” says Atul Phadnis, CEO of whatsonindia.com.


3. Junk Unexpected Mails


Never click on messages prompting you to click on a URL.. “Many companies advertise under emails, so if I’m not sure if the particular message is junk then I right-click and check the properties of the message and trace its path. If the sender that I see and the origin are not the same then I delete the message without even opening it”, says Pradyumna Gogate, CTO at FDS InfoTech.


4. Don’t Float IDs freely


Most of the spam you get is because you gave your email ID to somebody, somehow, somewhere. Do not post your email id on the web. Spambots scour the web for the @ symbol and other things that come along with it. Whenever possible, spell out the ‘at’ in your email id.


5. Use Anti-Spam Tools


Anti-spam and anti-virus software products, like Kaspersky or Norton, sync with your inbox to block spam. “You can configure a list of domains (for instance in abc@xyz.com, xyz-.com is the domain) that you want to block. There are servers available online that maintain a list of fraudulent domains. The anti-spam software checks with these servers, and if the domain is listed it automatically gets banned and the message is marked as junk,” says Gogate

- Anand Altekar

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