Receiving Unwanted Emails

[corina]

hey guys,

i'm writing this topic in the hope that someone recognizes and/or can help me. since a few days i am receiving emails from unknown "people"(???).

i have deleted some (and will continue doing that) but i'd rather not receive them. i think they are from the US (that's why i am writing here). as i don't visit many foreign sites and no one else in my family is receiving them i hope some of you can help me. today i received one from "Carry Glass: NHL thoughlesness" and "Maximillian Ward: mysterious contrasting".

anyone else, or anyone who knows how i can get rid of them????

thanks in advance,

corina

oh, btw, not sure if it's unwanted or not wanted??? think it might be the last?!

[Dawg Tired]

I have a Yahoo! e-mail account - they seem to have the very best spamguard around.

If I am doing anything at all that isn't strictly personal I use that address. For instance, I use that address on the website where my book is advertised. That way it is a "blind" account that no one can possibly access personal info off of. If I do get unwanted mail on it - which is rare - I click the "mark as spam" button at the top of their page.

[MightyMouse]

Corina, it's spam my dear. Just delete them without opening. Gmail, which is a free email service from google, has really good spam filtering. If you'd like a free gmail account which comes with more than 2 gigabytes of storage (yes, that's bigger than my last computer's hard drive!!), just pm or email me and I send you an invitation. Gmail is still in "beta" (test phase) and is by invitation only--but I've got at least 99 invites still to give away, so feel free if you want one to ask me (that goes for anyone here).

Nina

[corina]

thanks for helping gayla and nina!!! i thought that it was spam but didn?t know how to get rid of it!

nina, thanks for offering gmail. i would like to pm you after my vacation from 0707 till 24-2507.

corina

[DancingLight]

I LOVE gmail!!!!

Corina, I hope you ahve a wonderful vacation! And, I am sure you will come back to an email box full of spam! hahaha! Ugh!

Hey, I'v thought of an idiom for you...I have been thinking and thinking and felt like I was plumb out of any new possibilities...

but here goes....

This hits the spot! or That really hit the spot!

BTW, You will LOVE gmail! I can send you an invite also if Nina is too bogged down in her dep't! It is great for us POTSy folks. It keeps your 'conversations' together and has a wonderful search function so you can find emails easier. You can pull up a list of emails from one person and see what was written last...since I know we all sometimes forget! I love it, love it, love it! And, you don't have to worry about running out of space, like Nina said!

Emily

[Sophia3]

Ok..>Can Gmail be figured out easily?

I do like yahoo for the most part and my spam USUALLY goes to bulk folder but sometimes GOOD email goes to bulk folder.

I hate hotmail and use it for rare junk...signing up to read some articles online.

If anybody can give an invite to the Gmail deal, I would LOVE to try that.

I have PC with XP if that makes any difference.

Also, I would like to change my password to yahoo and I can find NO WHERE on their site how to do that. If anybody has tips on that, too, thanks.

But this is the first I heard of Gmail.

[corina]

sophia, i had heard about gmail before but didn't know what differences that actually has.

emily, you know how much i LOVE the idioms!!! i will figure this one out, while we are in france. we will be back in two and a half weeks. i'm sure i will have the answer by then

corina

[MightyMouse]

gmail is super easy to figure out--and it has a tour that makes it even simpler!

Nina

[Sophia3]

Ok I have GMAIL but what is the big deal about it? Yahoo holds 1 giga..somebody asked me if I had thought about a DVD burner if I was saving THIS MUCH STUFF, lol.

I have read MIXED reviews on Gmail message boards. In small tests I have done, it is SUPER QUICK. For others, it's so slow they are thinking about dropping it

How long have folks here used it? I am not giving up yahoo so quickly. BUT AM WEARY of the annoyiing bigger adds AND the spam.

Even more annoying is a NEW EMAIL often buried in the 500 messages I have saved?? Sometimes it is important email and sometimes spam.

Just wondered what all the hoopla is and if you guys use Gmail exclusively I never give my PRIVATE email out but am wondering how to try GMAIL during the transition.

Thanks for any tips or answers..and thanks to the person who sent me the INVITE.

Mucho thanks

[MightyMouse]

Sophia, I have been using Gmail for about a year and a half, and it's now my primary email. I have also created a dummy gmail account that I only use to fill out online forms, so I keep my personal email box pretty free of spam. But the occasional spam does end up getting through, and Gmail has been consistent about tagging it as such.

I also love how it automatically organizes conversations via email--items with the same titles get put together so you can link emails to what you've said/corresponded about in the past. Given my brain fog moments, this feature has been a life saver, especially at work where I have to keep track of about 50 children, not including the ones I get asked to just "look" at for an opinion. Add that to the 5 or 6 school district offices and their various staffers who are "case managers" for these kids, and without Gmail's conversational threads I'm lost--I usually don't have access to my files most days (my office is in a building where I have only 4 children) , just my laptop, so I can hop on Gmail and "see" what I'm supposed to know.

The gmail ads are usually only on the left margin (never have there been pop-ups) and honestly, I don't notice them. Also, I find it extremely fast--surely faster than other free online emailers. Those who find it slow are likely using a computer with less power (memory), and/or crummy browser and/or crummy isp connection--slowness is a combination of those things. For example, a dial up connection will probably be pretty slow upstream and downstream, causing the browser based emailers to respond slowly. I have dsl, so my connection is fast, and I am a Firefox snob. I have all the other browsers if needed, but my primary browser is Firefox.

Gmail offers 2+ gigs of storage--I use it to store files for work and grad school so that I DON'T have to carry a cd, dvd, jump drive or disk with me. We also have created a communal account for one of my grad school research projects. We store all of our major works there, as well as things like consent forms for participants, introduction letters on letter head to go to agencies we're working with, etc. I also use it for personal photos, like some of my travel shots from Croatia, so that I can show friends the photos without having to carry them with me--I just open them online.

Personally, I like how Gmail allows you to ORGANIZE. Create labels that make sense to you. Mine are things like "family", "friends", "work", "grad school", "travel photos", "bracelet business". You can tag things multiple labels too...so if my coworker is also in grad school with me, I can organize by both labels, that way, the email will appear in each of those html folders when I go looking.

In order to avoid new email getting burried in your list of emails, you need to use the ARCHIVE feature. When you do this, selected (checked) emails will be moved into the files if you've labeled...and if you've not labeled them, they go into the general mailbox archive. They're always there for you to find, and you can search your email quickly--I prefer the google search to the one that comes with MS outlook or entourage--it seems more "logical" to me.

Gmail is probably more than some folks need--however, I have been very happy with the features it has offered me.

Gosh, I just re-read what I've written & I sound like an advertisement. Keep in mind though, that Gmail is still in "beta", which means it's still in a public testing phase, so there are times when it's quirky, or doesn't work at all because they're either fixing things or something's gone awry. The longest I've experienced a glitch is less than 2 minutes--in the year and half I've been with Gmail, this has happened maybe 5 times? Nearly all of these were just a few seconds long. It's not bothered me, but I suppose if one is trying to email or message about something critical, it could be a problem

Nina

[Sophia3]

Thanks for the feedback Nina. I don't think you sound like an advertisement at all.

I am just wondering how to keep using my yahoo and Gmail w/o confusing myself.

ANd all the organization features sound GREAT but overwhelming to me since I tend to be LOST in new (fill in the blank!) message boards, email sites,

I do notice one new trend lately that I don't know if it is the newspapers online in general or the BLINKING ADDS at yahoo, but I am finding LOTS MORE COOKIES daily when I run spyware. Or when I tried using mozilla, I have tons of cookies to delete before I close it out.

So, I don't know what's going on. SOmebody suggest I change all my passwords (which is the SAME on most sites, but for a few) and heck, I can't even figure out how to do that.

So, I am just trying to figure out the Gmail and what it means.

Now if only somebody who sounds as organized and computer savvy like yourself were here to give me HANDS ON DEMONSTRATIONS!

THanks for all the feedback, though, as I went thru a thing last week, I had to log into yahoo, 10 times a day for about 3 days...THEN a message appeared telling me to "Redo my book mark" Duh and fixed the yahoo problem.

[MightyMouse]

I didn't figure out Gmail on my own, I used Gmail's online tour to show me how to use it. I may be a mighty mouse, but I'm not THAT good! nina

[MightyMouse]

Oh, and the fastest way to archive, even if you don't want to use lables, is use the small "all" link at the top of the listing of emails--it's right next to the word "select". This checks all the boxes. Then hit the archive button and all your old email gets put away. It's still there, but it's now located in the "all mail" section on the left margin.

To create labels, check mark the email you want to label by clicking the small open box to the left of each email title in the list. then, tucked in the pull down menu that says "more actions", select "new label". Type in the label you want for that email. The new label will now be added to your "more actions" menu pull down. You will also see a new section at the bottom left margin of your screen, marked "labels". That's where all your archived mail that's also labeled will be easy to find by just clicking into that folder.

To label an email using an existing label, you can either check mark email(s) and then choose your premade labels from the same "more actions" pull down, or your can do the same thing within emails as you're reading them.

I archive my mail before I get more emails than I can see in one screen of my laptop (before a scroll bar appears on my right margin!).

Nina