We've talked before about simplifying your life by paring down your email addresses to two, but today we're going to encourage you to use at least four. Why? Read on for the details as to why we've had a change of heart.
1. Personal & Work. Most people have these two, which we recommended earlier this year, but in case you're still using one email address for professional and personal correspondence, you should consider stopping. Do we really need to tell you why it's a bad idea to have one for both?
2. Spam. Ever enter a contest where you just know they're going to send you unwanted email, but you still want to enter and not have to deal with unsubscribing? Or perhaps you are signing up for a new service and are not sure about the account security. Use a special email address for these and it will help your two primary accounts stay clean and healthy. Note, adding aliases to your account is not going to serve this tip, as your inbox will still get cluttered, and they're linked to your account, which is no help for security at all.
3. Security. In Mat Honan's tale of how he was able to recover some data after hacking, he advises using dedicated (and secret) email accounts for password management. This will help prevent the hacking from spreading if one of your e-mail accounts is compromised. Sadly, I have personal experience with having my Google account hacked, and because I did not use dedicated, secret email accounts for password management they went from Google to AppleID + MobileMe and then into several other accounts and services I use, including Amazon. If I had followed this advice, the hacking would have stopped at Google and it would have been a much easier situation to resolve.
How many email addresses do you have and what do you use them for?
(Image 1: Flickr member Gubatron licensed for use under Creative Commons, 2: Ariel Zambelich for Wired)
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One. That is all I will have.
I have three but I'm really getting sick of managing and remembering passwords.
Please for the love of all that is good, make the spam email address one that you *actually* own. Don't just use some variation of your real email address that is registered to someone else. A woman with my name but a different spelling uses my spelling as her spam email address and I GET ALL THE SPAM. In addition to being very annoying, it's not really safe (especially if, like her, you sometimes give the spam address when you really should give your real one) - I've gotten welcome emails with usernames and passwords from things like Match.com, a car dealer's online credit application, and even her online tax return that gave me (partial to full) access to the info she'd stored/submitted. Lucky for her, I'm not even mean enough to use that info to convince her to stop spamming me, but I could easily steal her identity at this point.
TL;DNR - make sure to sign up for the "fake" address you use so that no one else is being spammed or potentially gaining access to any of your info.
I have several. I have one for business, one for spam, one for family, one general correspondence, and one for school. I have a few secret accounts, as well, for redundancy (I bcc important emails, especially those with important attachments, to a secret account.) I have one that's my "library" account; if I see an article or webpage or link something I want to keep or return to, I email it to that account.
It's easy to manage multiple accounts with the right email client. I prefer Mozilla Thunderbird.
Why four addresses? I can see one for work, one for personal, and one for spam, but what's the fourth one for?
I have (essentially) three.
One for my personal online world (friends, etc)
One for family
One catch all on my domain that i sign up to every site with different.
Eg - for boingboing I use boingboing@, for twitter I use twitter@, and so on, this allows me to see which sites are selling my address and which are behaving. They all come to the same inbox, but i can see by the address it was sent to what site it belonged to.
This has been the best option I have found over the years.
Yahoo has had a rash of spambots hacking email addresses. It's really creepy getting email from one person whom I know is deceased, but still apparently has an active Yahoo account. I know he's deceased because his widow contacted me when MY Yahoo account started sending out spam.
Five... Or maybe four and a half. One I've had since I got on the Internet, two others that are set up for specific uses, an alias on the first one, one that came with my ISP.
I don't see the spam being an issue needing extra management if the filtering is good, but then I don't do social media and so my addresses may be more protected.
I have 2 - one for work and one for personal but I am very tempted to make a spam one as well since nearly 75% of the mail I get is store advertisements. I don't want to unsubscribe because they often have useful coupon codes but it gets old having to rifle through them all.
@MILLER8786 you can unsubscribe from all those store emails. When you want to shop, just google the store name and the words coupon code, like this: "jcrew coupon code" -- there are a bunch of sites like retailmenot.com that publish the active codes.
I have 4. A spam one that I also use to correspond with people when buying or selling on craigslist, work, personal (gmail) and another gmail I don't give out often, I occasionally use it for consulting work that I do and consider it my future personal email, in case my gmail ever gets hacked/spam filled/whatever. The second gmail, forwards into my personal email. I suppose that could be my security email.
I have 4 - work, personal (gmail), subscriptions (yahoo), spam (hotmail).
You really do not need a spam email. Why make an email you're never going to check ever again when you can just unsubscribe from the stupid newsletters? Heck, in Gmail you can even set it up to filter them automatically to your trash! It's really not that hard.
i have a work email, a spam email and a personal email. i could see adding more, but i definitely can't survive without three separate email entities.
i would also suggest, if you have an alma mater you're proud of, to connect with your alumni association to get an email address through them. you've paid a lot of money to have that address (alumni.carleton.ca for me) and many schools host it out of gmail, so the service is top notch.
I use spam filtering for my gmail accounts, so no need for a separate account. But the security suggestion is brilliant, assuming that you really can keep the address secret, i.e., someone who hacks your account can't see the address.
Let's see…
An AOL email address that won't die, from 14 years ago.
Possibly a Netscape email address, from 12 years ago.
Two email addresses tied to domain names we own.
Work email.
Freelance work/political spam (from signing petitions)/select contest spam email.
Personal email with a goofy address that no one I know understands and makes me think of getting a different one.
OK, to be honest, I don't check AOL, Netscape, or the two domain-related ones. Work email is only at work, and the other two are funneled into iOS Mail where I can view them as a single "account".
The password management one is GENIUS. Genius. Setting that up right now.
@PARNASSUS - Retailers definitely create specific codes for those coupon sites, but some also send out codes to their email subscribers that are unique and for one time use only. Even if those do get posted to coupon sites, they wouldn't likely be valid. So it would pay to keep getting emails for those stores.
One - that's it.
Intrigued by the secret account, but not sure I understand entirely. Could some kind soul elaborate a bit?
Check out spamgourmet.com. An amazing free service, you create an account with one word that identifies you, say AptTherapy. It's now associated with your bonafide email account.
Then, when you're at an untrustworthy site, let's call it bogus.com, you can give them an address like this: bogus.4.AptTherapy@spamgourmet.com. The word "bogus" reminds you which site you gave the address to. The number four means that after getting four emails from this site, Spamgourmet will "eat" any future ones (hence "gourmet.")
I think you can specify that you're willing to receive anywhere from 1 to 20 emails. I've used it for years and it's great. The subject line of the email you receive via spamgourmet will say, for example, "3 of 20."
@Samurai, a secret e-mail account is simply one for which you provided all fake personal information-- fake name, fake birthdate, etc. You have to be a little careful with crossover info if you are a stickler, though. I'm not sure how much protection you get if you've done a fully alias account and then provided a backup contact e-mail to an address connected to your real identity.
*Some, though few, websites won't accept spamgourmet addresses; for example, Craigslist calls it a spoofed email address.
I still don't get how the secret email account will help with passwords - you create a fake identity, then email yourself all your PWs? That doesn't seem to at all be what Mat Honan is advocating.
I have three. Work, personal, & family. I don't seem to have a problem with filtering out the junk.
If you use Gmail, Outlook, or anything else that lets you set up rules and folders/labels, you shouldn't need any additional email addresses!
I have 4 addresses:
1. I have one for work, that is only used at work and on my work computer (somehow I'm lucky enough to not be in a position to need and use a cell phone for work!!!).
2. I have my personal Gmail address, which is used for everything.
3. My previous Gmail address (still functioning, uses my maiden name which some people still use) is synced up to my current personal Gmail. Messages sent to that email immediately show up in my personal inbox. I haven't physically signed into that account in years. (NOTE: You can do this with Hotmail, but Hotmail gets picky if you don't sign in for a certain length of time. I lost my old Hotmail address this way -- it was not a big loss, though! Just make sure you sign into your Hotmail occasionally if you are going to POP or fwd it to another email, to keep it active.)
4. My home-business email address (myname@mydomain.com) runs though my personal Gmail as well, through a POP server.
You can even set up multiple inboxes to keep the emails separate within Gmail. Set up a bunch of filters to tag and move emails as you want them sorted. The only thing I wish that Gmail had was a function to archive an email after a certain amount of time. Instead, I just archive all the newsletters and bacn immediately after I receive/read it, so my inbox is only full of relevant emails from real people.
I have everything set to tag automatically as well, so I can find things in the future when I need them. For example, emails from Old Navy get tagged with "clothing." When I receive the email, I immediately archive it so it doesn't show up in my inbox. When I decide I want to go shopping and see if I have any coupons or deals from Old Navy, I just pull up the clothing tag, or search Old Navy. No inbox clutter, no need to sign into another email address, and everything I need is right there!
/end long-winded rant about email management. Inefficient systems are one of my pet-peeves....
I'm with Starwitness and Samurai. Don't get the "secret email password management account" at all!
I did go to the original article in Wired, which is staggering. I read the rather lengthy page and then saw it was only the first of 6 or 7, so gave up on getting an explanation. So yeah, if anyone wants to write a "secret email for Dummies" comment, it would be greatly appreciated!
i am a little annoyed at myself that i spent a whole 2 minutes reading this post. rediculous!
it really depends on what kind of work you do.. as a graphic designer, i have more than four but based on specific issues my clients might have, ie. support@, orders@, etc that way from the moment I get the email.. I am immediately ready for what is necessary to be done. If you have a good email folders setup, then usually spam is fairly easy to take care of.
three. one for work, one for personal, one old one that's now for spam.
i suppose technically i do have a fourth, as my phone number can act as one thru my mobile network, but that's only used in very rare occasions.
I have a lot of them!
one is a catch-all that i use all the time, i get news reports with it and all my subscriptions are there too. it's a hotmail address, so i use for instant messaging too.
one is with my first + last anme and is for close family only
one is my blog nickname and is used with my primary interest in alternative medicine and natural solutions for health.
one is for my etsy shop and art blog.
i seldom use but just in case i have a gmail account for my friends who only have gmail. this makes instant messaging through google easier.
so that's a minimum of 5 for me!
BM
"Secret email" -- yeah, I'm with starwitness and samurai and annieo -- what is a secret email account?? and how best to store and keep track of one's passwords...? These basic questions are still unanswered (maybe it's that we're less tech savvy?)
Technically, nine. But only five that I use regularly.
Secret email-
Many sites allow you to recover/change your password by sending a link to an email address that you've provided ahead of time. Often they also send notification emails to that address every time you change your password, add another email address, or do some other action that may change who is allowed or how you login.
The secret email address is an address that you ONLY use for the kinds of emails above. You don't give it out to anyone for any other reason.
This helps with security because if someone gets access to an account, at the very least you would be alerted when they change your password.
Using a separate account for recovery also helps limit the damage from one compromised account. Often people will use their other email accounts as the recovery email. Even worse they often all go to the same account. So if someone gets into Gmail, they can now go to Yahoo!, Hotmail, iCloud, your bank, etc, and ask to reset the password. Which sends an email back to Gmail. Now they control everything.
You can also use the trick in gmail. Gmail allows you to create an email address and doesn't care where certain characters are, it sees it as the same email address, but allows you to filter it differently. For example, johnsmith@gmail.com vs. john.smith@gmail.com
Gmail sees it the same, but allows you to filter one of them to a personal spam folder while leaving the other untouched. It comes in to the same inbox, but is filteres so you are left with the inbox of one of the "virtual" addresses and the other one goes to the folder you designate. You treat them the same as you would 2 different email addresses when deciding who to give each one to. This would reduce you to 3 emails. Work, Personal, and password.
3 emailaaount. Work, personal and one limited to online shopping, ebay and Paypal.
I use sneakemail to cull spam. Every site gets a unique address. If I start getting spam, cut that one off and use another. Worth every penny. It also lets us both get itineraries, bills, etc.
I have 4 accounts. 1 for personal email, 1 for professional email, 1 for newsletters and 1 for everything else (placing orders, coupons, bills, etc.)
Actually, I have two e-mail addresses but I only use one of them. Why on earth would I want four? I'm short on RAM (in my brain) so one is enough, thank you very much.
I have many. But I use three of them (not counting my actual company work email). I don't have a dedicated professional and personal email, but only very select friends have my "professional" email. A grand total of maybe five or six friends have my professional email address.
Great advise! I have 6 accounts, but tips #2 and #3 didn't cross my mind before!! thanks AT!
Why so complicated? Assuming you don't have your own website with e-commerce, etc., why not just use filters? Aside from work email, I just have one address, where I simply set up filters to automatically route generic emails to their respective folders (e.g., online shopping, newsletters, etc.). I use Yahoo, which is surprisingly effective at catching spam, so no issues for me there. As for the security issue, don't use passwords like "12345." Pick something unusual, use it for everything (as I've done for over 10 years), and you won't have a problem.
I have a work, personal, school, shopping/spam, and an old personal email. My personal is a gmail and my spam is a gmail - you can set it so that you can be signed on to more than one gmail account at one on your computer and switch back and forth between them. The one i use for shopping/spam is good for keeping all the emails i sometimes ignore in one place - so the more important stuff doesnt get lost int he shuffle. It's not complicating your life to have so many if you have a smartphone. In the old days I would have to make sure i signed on to each one ever so often or else they would get cancelled due to inactivity - now, I have all accessible in one spot on my phone. It works out nicely!
Unfortunately I need 2 personal email addresses. 1. For friends who understand the phrase "DO NOT PUT ME ON FORWARD LISTS" and 2. "Friends" who don't get that concept. Am I speaking Greek or something?
@JoshZytkiewicz Thanks for the Secret Email explanation. I'm still a little confused though. If you're entering this secret email when you register with sites in order to have password recovery requests sent there, couldn't someone just hack the secret email and then you'd be in the same situation? Once they have access to your secret email, they can reset everything else. Maybe I'm just not quite getting it...
Don't forget to use a fake name. My boyfriend uses a different handle for every service he signs up with, and now he knows who's selling his information. If he gets mail for a famous skiier, he can track down who gave out his address.
There are many ways around all of these reasons. Turn on 2-step verification for your gmail account. Use mail rules/filters to file your spam to a specific folder. Never use a catch-all password (or at least use a unique password for your email). Most people are given a work email so you'll end up with two at least, and that's how it should stay. At least four email addresses? That is excessive and frankly bad advice.
Mailinator.com is great for cutting down on spam You don't sign up for anything just use whatever name you'd like@mailinator.com. There are no passwords to remember.
I still don't get the password management thing.
I use three. 1 for my company, 1 for personal, and 1 I created for facebook and now also use to sign up for things, you could call that the spam one. I read that it's not good to use an emailadress for a facebook account when oyu're using it for your personal emails (bank data, money transfers, etc), too. I have no idea whether that's true but to be safe, I created one for fb.
I have 6. Glad to see i'm not the only one with this many email accts lol Thank goodness for my iPhone and iPad, all my email accts sync up to one device :)
6 may be too much for some, but it helps. Especially, if it's all work and freelance related.
oh wow, I have 10! I use each one for different services. One for each social media site and one for each email service, oh and of course work. I don't really notice I have so many because I receive all of my email on my phone in one inbox. I'm surprised some people only have 1!! lol
Hi Duane,
why did you choose to have multiple email accounts? Would be so cool to have one app that hosts and manages all email accounts, so that you dont have to constantly log in and remember passwords.
What is the main reason you choose to have 1 account? Is is based on your current email usage?
I guess it seems for those with multiple accounts (for reasons listed in this post) would be nice to have the feeling of just ONE place to manage it all. What do you think?