Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

I don’t use AOL (and pity those of you who do - LOL!), but I was asked recently about using BCC (blind carbon copy) in AOL.

I found this solution:

Add Bcc Recipients to an Email in AOL

To add a Bcc recipient to a message you are composing in AOL:

* Start with a new message (click on the Write icon in the AOL toolbar).
* Enter Bcc recipients’ email addresses in the Copy To: box.
o Separate multiple recipients by commas.
* Make sure you put the Bcc recipients in parentheses.
o For example: “(ladeduaolmember, ladedu@ladedu.com)”
* Write and deliver your email as usual.

I found it here.

For more on Email Etiquette, please see my Email Etiquette eBook.

I had a discussion yesterday with a client about security and trusted third parties. The point I am always trying to make is that when you trust a company, you not only trust them, but every employee they have. Think about that before trusting.

Related in a different way is an article in Wired titled Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Spills to Feds. Hushmail provides secure web based email in that it normally is encrypted with a Java client on your PC and decrypted at reader’s PC. Hushmail servers only see encrypted data.

But that method is slightly inconvenient, so Hushmail offers another option. With the other option, the encryption key is known to the Hushmail server for a short time. You really need to read the article to understand the full details, but the bottom line is this: convenience will cost you security.

Is anyone surprised by this?

I was at a conference recently where I was discussing secure communications with a person who has ties in high places. He assured me that no level of encryption is more than a slight inconvenience to the Feds. This article, to me, indicates otherwise.

But just sending encrypted data is a red flag that says “look here”. So weigh those options before encrypting anything. Unless of course you have a high volume of junk you can encrypt to act as red herrings.

Yahoo’s Reuters article on Top 7 Office Pet Peeves (Yahoo story deleted/moved) quoted a guy commenting on this survey of top office pet peeves.

Two had to do with emailing, and as the author of an Email Etiquette eBook, I thought I would comment.

The first pet peeve was selecting “reply all” when that wasn’t needed. To me, if the email originally did need to get sent out to a group with public display of all addressees, then it would be common courtesy to reply to all IF on the same topic. The problem would arise when someone hits reply all to ask the original sender “oh, BTW, how’s your Aunt’s arthritis doing?

That’s just dumb and not thinking. Yes, and that translates into rude. But then again, that type of response shouldn’t be on the office email anyway, right?

The second office pet peeve had to do with BCC’ing. BCC is Blind Carbon Copy, where the recipient doesn’t know what other recipients there may or may not be. BCC is VERY APPROPRIATE and COURTEOUS in a wide variety of circumstances, although, usually, not inter-office.

This person was quoted, or perhaps misquoted, as saying that to use BCC was like standing up and shouting “Fire” in the middle of the building. What? Perhaps it’s a misquote.

The comment followed a statement that “no email is private”. I agree. And those who think email is private, especially corporate email, are terribly naive. I cover this also in my Email Etiquette eBook.

The eBook is still available for $9.95, but probably not for long.

I have also written articles about the appropriate use of BCC, check out Associated Content.

Want to digitally sign your emails? A Secure Email Certificate is required if you want to communicate with others via email and know that you know who you are corresponding with.

Most companies charge for the certificate. Comodo, who recently acquired BOClean and now provides it for free, is offering a free secure email certificate for personal users. Naturally they would like to sell some services to your business.

Comodo’s website seems to be changing fast and furious, and as a result I hit a few broken links and even had a hard time finding the free secure email certificate from the link on the home page. But it’s here.

Comodo has some instructions on how to use the certificate (it’s pretty easy) for the most popular email clients including Mozilla Thunderbird.

(Here it is in Outlook 2003)

All you have to give them is a name and email address and they will send you the free certificate. The name is what will be displayed when someone accesses the certificate so you need to give them your real name, or whoever you are known as to those you will be sending the digitally signed emails to.

Signing up for their newsletter is on by default, but optional. Even then, the link I clicked to confirm opt-in came up with a 404 error so I’m not sure I’ll even get the newsletter.

In today’s age of spam and spoofed email, digitally signing your email isn’t a bad idea. And now that it’s free - it’s always been easy - what are you waiting for?

I am thrilled to announce that today’s Early To Rise (ETR) newsletter features an article from yours truly. You can read it here.

The article published in ETR is actually an edited version of one of my submissions to Associated Content and EzineArticles on using Blind Carbon Copy (BCC).

If you are not currently a subscriber to ETR, I highly recommend it. You can subscribe here.

Email client: local or remote? By which I mean, do you get you email on a local installation of a program such as Outlook, Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird? Or do you use a web email product such as Hotmail, Yahoo! mail or Gmail?

If you use Windows Mail (Vista) or Outlook Express, be advised that Microsoft if planning to “upgrade” these products to Windows Live HotMail, a web based product.

The difference is that with a local product, you retrieve the mail from the mail server and it then resides on your computer and is deleted from the mail server. With a web based product, the mail is always stored on the remote server.

On the plus side of the web based email clients, you can access your email from anywhere in the world, heck even outer space, as long as you have an internet connection. Most web based products are free, as long as you don’t mind looking at distracting and even sometimes distasteful ads. The web based products even have built in spam, phishing and scam protection that at least works to a degree.

With a web based email product, you never have to worry about storing or backing up your email - you just hope that they do.

On the minus side of the web based, or remote email client is privacy and control. While I use a Yahoo! account as my “junk email account” for those one time sign ups to get a free download from someone I don’t trust with my email address, there are other alternatives to that I have written about also.

Email is data; and I never trust others with my data. Period. End of story. I don’t want Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! or any one else able to rummage through my mail for marketing purposes, to see who my friends, family and business contacts are, or to turn over to some Federal Agency on a whim. My email is boring by most standards, but I consider it private nonetheless.

I further do not trust others not to lose my data; or go out of business, or quit providing the service, or to start charging for it. And I don’t want someone else to sort or segregate my mail for me and not allow me to see what has been done with it, as some of these webmail services will do.

For my primary corporate and personal email I use Outlook 2003 in conjunction with my MS Small Business Server running Exchange 2003. The only reason I would use Outlook Express, if I didn’t have Thunderbird, would be for newsgroup access. How Microsoft is handling that in Windows Live HotMail I haven’t checked into. Perhaps they expect you to use web based access for that also. That may work for casual access, but it doesn’t work for me.

But this is me, and you are you. The question is, “What type of person are you?”

Do you want your email on a server at Microsoft, or do you want it on your own private machine? Soon you may need to decide.

When you send an email and start to type in the email address of the recipient(s), programs like Outlook will pop down a suggestion box of addressees who you have emailed in the past. These are called Nicknames (sometimes AutoNameCheck).

The first question people ask is, “I just got a new computer, where are all of those old addresses?”. Knowing Microsoft, you don’t expect them to be easy to find, do you?

Look in:

C:\Documents and Settings\%ProfileName%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

for a file called “Outlook.NK2″. If your Outlook profile is named something else, replace “Outlook” with that name. The NK2 extension is the giveaway.

Simply close Outlook and copy that file from the old PC to the New or copy it to a backup device for backup safekeeping.

The second question I get is, “I have names that pop up that are bad addresses or I never use them. How do I get rid of them?”. For some reason, that isn’t obvious to most people. When the window pops up, arrow down to the one you want to delete and press the delete key on your keyboard. That easy.

Outlook Nicknames are like favorites. Make sure to back them up with your normal backup procedure (you do have one, yes?) and be sure to carry them over to your new PC.