The success of messengers is gigantic. Nevertheless, e-mail is far from extinct. It will continue to be emailed. But many neglect the organization and security of their messages.
Not many things on the Internet have lasted as long as email. Although the first electronic letter was sent back in 1971, the e-mail principle is still up-to-date more than 50 years later. With these tips, everyday life with electronic messages can be optimized or made more secure:
Get emails home
This can be done with so-called e-mail clients. These programs offer more features than ever. In addition, their setup is much easier than before, explains Jörg Geiger from the “Chip” trade magazine. If you have an account with a large e-mail provider, you often only have to enter your e-mail address and password. Complete. Servers, ports and even more cryptic information are usually no longer necessary.
If required, several mail accounts can be used simultaneously in one client. The messages can be filtered or sorted automatically. And above all, the mails can be “freed” from the server of the mail provider and saved and archived on the computer at home or on an external data carrier. Geiger recommends the free mail client Thunderbird from Mozilla, which, like the Firefox browser, is constantly being developed and is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux.
But e-mail programs such as Windows Mail or Apple Mail, which are supplied with the operating systems from Microsoft and Apple, are sufficient for private users, says Geiger. In any case, you don’t have to spend money on an e-mail client.
Manage email accounts
Many users have old email addresses that they hardly ever use. For those who do not want to constantly log in to check, there are two other functions available in addition to the mail client: automatic forwarding and retrieval.
Most free email providers offer automatic forwarding. According to Geiger, however, the function has disadvantages: after forwarding, the sender field no longer contains the name of the original sender, but rather the name of the person who forwarded the mail.
It is therefore more elegant to collect e-mails. With the function, which is also called e-mail import or collection service, for example, an e-mail account retrieves messages from one or more other mailboxes after a certain period of time and saves them. Automatic forwarding or the collection service can – if available – be activated in the settings of the mail account.
Send email attachments
As a rule, large amounts of data cannot be sent by e-mail. For Gmail, the total attachment size cannot exceed 25 megabytes (MB). With the free mail accounts from Web.de or GMX, for example, 20 MB must not be exceeded.
A trick is needed for larger attachments: It is best to share them via online storage, i.e. via services such as Google Drive or Dropbox. Just add the download link to the email.
However, users should always consider what they send as an attachment, advises Prof. Christian Dörr, who heads the cybersecurity department at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam. “E-mail is technically a postcard,” he explains. Sensitive data such as a copy of an ID card should not be sent unencrypted.
For more sensitive data, Dörr recommends a free service from the Dutch telecommunications group KPN (“Filetransfer.kpn.com”). Users can use this to upload up to four gigabytes (GB) of data encrypted with a password and without an account or registration.
Jörg Geiger recommends the following procedure for transfer services that do not encrypt: With free compression programs such as 7-Zip, files can also be encrypted with a password at the same time as they are compressed and thus secured. Such encrypted zip files can then be shared without hesitation via unencrypted online storage or transfer services.
If you want to send larger amounts of data that are zipped and encrypted or do not require any special protection without an account or registration with an online storage service, you can use services such as “Wetransfer.com” (up to 2 GB free), “Transfernow.net” (free up to 5 GB) or “Swisstransfer.com” (free up to 50 GB). Here, too, you will receive a download link for sharing after the upload. The providers delete the data after a few days.
Consider email security
The e-mail inbox is usually the linchpin of a digital identity. The address is used to register with many other services. And e-mails with links to reset passwords from various services usually also go to the main e-mail account.
So a hacked main mailbox is a threatening scenario. What do you do if it happens anyway? And how can you tell if your own email account has been hacked?
It’s often not that easy, says Prof. Dörr. An indication could be that previously unread e-mails are suddenly marked as read, filter rules have been changed or e-mails have been deleted.
But data leaks and successful hacker attacks can also be security risks. In both cases, user information is compromised. And according to Dörr, not all services save their users’ passwords in encrypted form. Anyone who has been leaked or hacked and has also used the stolen password to login to the mail account is an easy victim.
Protect digital identity
Passwords must always be strong and unique, especially for email accounts. And one should enable and use two-factor authentication wherever available.
However, anyone who suspects that their email account has been the victim of an attack should change their password immediately in order to “slam the door as quickly as possible,” advises cybersecurity expert Dörr.
Users can and should regularly check whether the e-mail addresses and passwords they use to log in have fallen victim to hacker attacks or data leaks and can be found online. This can be done with the help of HPI’s “Identity Leak Checker” or on “Haveibeenpwned.com”. Both services collect such leaked information in databases.
