Blog / How many email addresses should you have?
Let’s talk about your personal security behavior for a minute.
Most of my newsletters are aimed at organizations in some capacity. Many of them involve creating official policies or procedures to ensure that employees have a solid set of rules to follow. This time I wanted to talk about personal habits surrounding email and security. Most people’s personal habits aren’t particularly secure; we do things a certain way because that’s how we’ve always done it.
Unfortunately, that means most people’s personal email habits are far from secure. So in the interests of helping protect your personal security, let’s talk about email; specifically, how many emails should you use?
The answer is three, and each email has a specific purpose.
- Personal
This is the email that you use to talk to friends and family with.
- Working
This email is different. It’s what you use when settings up important things like banking, websites you purchase from and
- Junk
This is the email you use for everything else. A lot of downloads require that you register with an email, and they send you a link to download the files. Many times, you’ll find yourself going to a website one time and in order too get what you’re looking for you need to provide an email or activate the account or something.
While you may have three email inboxes you only really need to pay attention to the first two. Notifications from banks and important websites would go to your working email and emails from people you know go to your personal email. The junk email is for everything else. A setup like this means the only email of yours that should be floating around on the internet for spammers to throw ads at would be the junk email. This improves your personal security by reducing your chances of being phished by hiding the emails you use for day-to-day communication.
The bar for entry into spam or email phishing is very low. The internet is global and email travels over every bit of it. Your email can be attacked by anyone, from anywhere, on the planet. Taking a few extra steps for security’s sake will not only protect you but will also help keep your inbox blessedly clear of spam.
This week’s Shakespeare quote comes from King Lear; “How, in one house, should many people under two commands hold amity? Tis hard; almost impossible.”
If you’d like to learn more about email best practices, or help developing a secure email policy for your organization, contact one of our specialists for some stress-free cybersecurity.
Be kind, courtesy your friendly-neighbourhood cyberman.
