Far too many email accounts
Guess how many different email addresses I have?! Ok, I’ll just tell you. It’s ten. And I’m sure there might be one or two others lingering about that I’ve forgotten about.
Clearly that’s way too many and far too confusing for others. I’m getting increasing complaints from family members asking which address they should use to contact me.
To be fair, apart from my work email account, all the other email address automatically forward to one main account, but still, I think I’m in need of some consolidation.
At the moment, I’m looking to break down my emails into three accounts: Work, Personal, and Mosaic. Then I’ll have one dedicated email for each and encourage people to stop using any others. I will then look to keep my main Gmail account but simply as a backup where a copy of all emails sent to those three main account goes just in case.
Obviously my Work and Mosaic accounts are pretty set, but I am looking to use my .Mac (soon to be MobileMe) for personal emails.
The only potential complication to all this is that I do want to make the most of the new MobileMe push services for email, calendar, and contact updates. I don’t know what the setup of MobileMe is going to look like, but I may decide to route everything though MobileMe if I can’t attach my Work and Mosaic accounts to it. We’ll see!
I guess ultimately I’m saying all this to say that I’m trying to make a concerted effort to get on top of my email addresses and do some consolidation. I’ll keep you posted with how it goes!
June 20th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Now this I can sympathise with! I used to have just the one tiscali account but now I have six! Not all tiscali of course, that’d just be daft. Its my wife you see, Patty. Bit of a penny pincher and is ALWAYS changing our service provider. So it all mounts up you see and I don’t receive important emails. I missed deliveries as I havn’t found my invoices! Wickes called three times once! Anyway I shall sit down with my wife (goodly rotten apple that she is) and sort this out tonight. Thanks for the inspro!
Simon Slive
June 20th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
On just the personal email side, I have 5 personal and 173 aliases (www.e4ward.com). I create a different alias address for nearly every business I interact with.
The alias address then forwards to one of the 5 email accounts I choose. For example, emails from Dell might go to dell@stevewatson.e4ward.com. This allows me to shut any alias down if someone starts spamming that address. If I only gave that address to Dell and I start getting spam to dell@steve…, then they sold (or someone stole) a list of email addresses.
I’ve been using aliases for about 5 years. Worst business offender for selling email addresses so far? a major US airline. I’ve had to delete an alias and create a new one for their email three times!
The alias concept allows me to aggregate mail from different addresses to a specific account I designate.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Wow. Impressive. Isn’t that a LOT of work though??
I can see it definitely helping on the spam front though and helpful to name and shame bad companies!
June 20th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
By the way, Steve, have you had a look at MobileMe at all? Any thoughts?
June 20th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
The only additional work is adding a new alias address before I register for something new. All my mail ends up coming to a primary address where I check it.
My primary motivation was two-fold - spam reduction and information security. If you can’t guess the address I registered at a given site, you need my address AND password to compromise the account fully.
Paranoid techie idiosyncrasies I suppose…
June 20th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
D is rabid to get the new iPhone…so I’ll get a hands-on-look when she gets a new phone.
The web2.0 interface looks interesting. Push technology to synchronize my devices is compelling.
My biggest anxiety at this point is information security aspects. Does a single compromised device allow them access to my other ’synched’ devices? e.g., if I lose my iPhone can they compromise my desktop and laptop too.
I think we’ll continue to see interesting advances in the ubiquitous computing space over the next few months.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Did my husband just call me rabid?
I am excited to get a new iphone, only because I’ve been using a junky clunky Treo hand-me-down which I loath!
June 20th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
It was more expressing your desire for the phone than a defining characteristic.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Ha…I guess he know’s best!!
And are you sure that’s the ONLY reason you want an iPhone…nothing to do with the phone itself!!
June 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Yes…but I have to paint the full picture in order to get one! Ha!