Emails are still a reality of daily life for many of us. Although social media and other platforms are now the preferred method for informal communication, business and administration still relies heavily upon email. It is often the primary means of setting up an account for any online service. And it is also a source of unending junk, spam and pointless communications. Despite the numerous benefits, emails are often a source of annoyance and frustration. At present, I have 8 accounts that I use for various purposes. Between them I receive about 100 plus emails a day, most of which are marketing or spam. However, some of these are important and require action. Hence I have to check throughout the day as to which emails should be kept and which can be deleted. Being an organised person I’ve created various folders for archiving.
Although a lot of email is superfluous, a percentage is relevant and needs to be retained. As well as banking data, order confirmations, receipts and communications with HMRC, more recently I’ve had a lot of solicitors correspondence while dealing with my Father’s estate. This is important data. The kind that’s a major headache to replace if you lose it. So considering the nature of such emails, I find it odd that many of us still rely upon free services to manage them. Gmail, Yahoo Mail and GMX all serve a purpose and suit our needs. They provide access via phone, tablet and PC and don’t cost a penny. Which is great until they go wrong, suffer an outage or the service is “retired”. Then there’s a problem. For example,Yahoo Mail recently changed their authentication protocols for 3rd party access to their mail servers. Webmail was not affected but if you used Outlook or some similar service, you need to add a new password, generated via Yahoo. It took a while to get this to work and the instructions were hardly user friendly for the layman.
This temporary interruption of service got me thinking as to whether I should move away from these free accounts. I have two registered domains that have hosted email account services. One I used when I was self employed and reflected the business name. The other is associated with this website. Like all services that you pay for, there are SLAs, helplines and support when required. But because I didn’t want to use the email addresses associated with these domains when registering for online services, I ended up creating numerous free accounts as a means of segregating junk email. Which has led to the situation I find myself in at present. Trying to access and manage 8 email accounts using Microsoft Outlook on my desktop PC. I have the same access on my Samsung Galaxy S10 5G.
I understand that the subject matter of this post is somewhat dry. But emails are a reality for many of us. As well as just keeping an eye on the ebb and flow of communication and weeding out the relevant from the irrelevant, we now have to battle against the “overzealous spam filter”, which will often consign important emails to the junk folder in error. I realise that the best solution to my situation is to log into all those accounts for things like Feedly, Mega, Uplay etc. and change the registered email address from Yahoo Mail or GMX to one of my hosted mail services. That way I won’t be inconvenienced if these free services close. The only downside to this plan is that it means amending details on about 250 plus accounts. That is no small task. And If I’m doing that chore I may as well go through my password manager and clear out any old records there. It would appear that being organised is a job in itself.
