Posts Tagged ‘e-mail’
Question Asked: How Can I Use Gmail For My Domain Name E-mail?
You’ve got two completely different options. One is the “Easy” way, and the other is “Not so easy”.
The easy way:
- Go to your domain registrar control panel and create an email forwarding account for your domain.
- Decide what your branded email address will be (for example, john@johnsmith.com) and forward it to your Gmail address. You do this by filling up two fields in your domain registrar’s email forwarding control panel:
- In the “Add Forward” field, type in the left portion of your branded email address, in this example john.
- In the “Forward Mail To” field, type in your current Gmail address: johnsmith@gmail.com.
- Log on to Gmail.
- Click on Settings (you’ll find the link in the top right corner).
- Click on Accounts.
- Click on Add Another Email Address.
- Add your new, branded address: john@johnsmith.com
- Click on the Next Steps button.
- Click on the Send Verification button. Gmail will now send you a message with a link that you must click to verify that in fact you own your branded domain. Since in step 2 you have already forwarded your branded address to your Gmail address, the verification email will be automatically forwarded to your regular Gmail address.
- Open the verification email and click on the verification link. You’re almost done.
- Go back to the Accounts tab of the Settings menu (see 4 and 5). You should see your new branded email address already listed there.
- Click on the link that says ‘make default’ next to your branded address.
- Check the radio button next to “always reply from my default address”.
The “Not so easy” way:
- Sign up for Google Apps (link), and follow the steps they give you to configure your account, and settings.
- Sign in to your hosting account, and go to the MX record maintenance page.
- Delete all existing MX entries.
- Enter the following MX records.
- Save your changes. Your MX records are now configured to point to Google. Keep in mind that changes to MX records may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout the Internet.
-
MX Server address Priority ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 10 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 20 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 20 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30 Note: ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM is the top priority mail server. Don’t assign the top priority to any other servers. Be sure to include trailing dot (.) at the end of any full-qualified domain names (for example, server.example.com.) if your MX records require this format.
- Save your changes. Your MX records are now configured to point to Google. Keep in mind that changes to MX records may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout the Internet.
In either case, any message sent to you will end up in your Gmail account, and you’ll be able to respond there. In the “Easy” case, it’s a forwarded message sent from your mail server. In the “Not so easy” case, it’s actually delivered directly to Gmail.
If you’ve got the ability to utilize the “Not so Easy” way, that’s the preferred way of doing things. Keep in mind that you’re now limited to whatever size mailbox that Google has alloted you, and bound by the rules of Google’s mail service, and not your webhost’s.
Question Asked: How Do I Recognize Phishing E-mails?
As a follow up to yesterday’s How Do I Prevent Getting E-mail Spam?, CJ has asked today’s question about phishing e-mails.
First, though, I should probably explain what “phishing” is. Phishing is when someone (usually a criminal) creates a “spoof” website that looks just like a popular service that you’d use. America Online, Bank of America, Paypal, eBay, etc. These sites are always the target of phishing.
So, to “phish”, someone would send you an official looking e-mail (the phishing attempt), in hopes that you’d click on the “update your credit card” or “update your password” links, and go to their phony website. You’d then try to login to their fake site, and they’d log your details, and then have access to your account on the real website.
Here’s an example of what a Paypal Phishing e-mail looks like:
Phishing E-mail Example
Note the “click here” link. That link wouldn’t take you to the real Paypal website, but to a phishing site, that would look almost exactly like the Paypal Website.
The good news is, most modern browsers (commonly used IE7 and Firefox 3) try to protect you with giant warning messages:
IE7 Warning Message
Firefox 3 Warning Message
As you can see, the sites that may be a phishing website (assuming you click on the link in the email) are usually already reported to agencies that monitor this sort of stuff, and the alert should pop up to protect you.
Let’s go back, though, to the e-mail, and how you can recognize it.
A phishing email will always look like it’s real. However, most companies now try to make it easier to spot a message that isn’t from them. Paypal and eBay for example, always use your first name when they send you a real e-mail. So if you get an e-mail from “Paypal”, that addresses you as “Dear Customer”, it’s fake. Same with eBay.
Another trick is to put your mouse over the link they give you to click. If you look in the bottom left corner of your screen (or e-mail program) it’ll show you the “real” address that it wants to send you to, not what it actually says in the e-mail. Here, try it:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-done&login_access=123456
What you see on the page, is the “real” URL to Paypal’s website. If you put your mouse pointer over it (don’t click), and look to the bottom left of your browser, you should see the real address I linked to. If you can’t see it, try enabling the “Status Bar” view in your browser. (Go to View in the toolbar up to, then click “Status Bar”, that should fix it.)
The best practice is simple. If you get an e-mail from a company asking you to update any type of sensitive information (credit card, address, social security number, etc), don’t click on any links in the e-mail, even if you’re sure it’s real. Simply open your browser, and type in the website address by hand. That way you can ensure that you’re at the right website, and not a fake. Generally if a company sends you a message that’s real, it’ll be somewhere in their website. eBay, Paypal, and Bank of America all have a “messages center”, where you can read mail that they’ve sent you. That’s the safest bet.
Recognizing phishing e-mails is a gut instinct. If you think it’s phony, chances are, it is.
Question Asked: How Do I Prevent Getting E-mail Spam?
Tricky question, but also one with quite a lot of possible answers. I’ll detail a few things you can do.
- Don’t put your e-mail address on any website. If you’ve got your own website, having a “Contact Us” form is a better way to have your visitors contact you, and helps reduce spam.
- Don’t sign people’s “guestbooks” with your “real” e-mail address. Get a secondary “spam only” address, that your important communications don’t go to.
- Utilize an e-mail service that has reliable spam filters (ie; Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc), or if you have your own website, and run your own mail servers, utilize the filters built into your mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc).
- Don’t sign up for “Work at home” offers.
- Don’t respond to spam that you get, including using the “Opt out” links. If you receive spam, simply mark it as spam. Your mail program should be smart enough to not deliver any messages from that sender again.
- Search Google for your e-mail address. If it comes up on some websites (for example, a guestbook you signed years back), e-mail the site owner and ask them to remove your e-mail address. Most website owners will glady comply. (Side note: most guestbook services [and other online website add-on services] don’t show the e-mail address on the website, by default anymore)
The safest practice is to not put your address online. If you want people to be able to find you, and be safe from spam, use a social networking site like LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace.