Devil is Blogging

Once again Google has proved that they are the number one webmail. Almost all the webmail services – GMail, YahooMail,Windows Live Mail…. – are using HTTPS for logging the users in. i.e., if you are using firefox, you will see a bluish glow in the left end of the address bar when you are accessing the sign in page of gmail (and other webmails too). And if you take a closer look, you will see the addtess of the page starts with HTTPS, rather than just HTTP.

Having HTTPS in the sign in page makes it very difficult for hackers to steal your password. But once you are loggged in successfully, the HTTPS access is switched to normal HTTP . And everything you do now with your email account -sending mails, reading mails, viewsing contact book.. – is over the normal HTTP connection. So a hacker or even a high schooler with no programming knowledge can easily see everything you are doing. So, your sensitive information is compromised.

And the solution?

In Gmail’s settings, there was this option to set full time HTTPS access to your mail account. But it was optional. Now Google has made the HTTPS mode enable by default for all mail accounts. (Still you can disable it under the settings if it is itching).

I strongly recommend everyone using the ‘always use HTTPS’ setting.

I will be writing some posts covering HTTPS and internet security soon. Come back soon. Bye now.

Popularity: 39% [?]

We all agree that Gmail is the coolest mail service out here. I recently read from the Official Gmail Blog two more cool features of Gmail. To be honest, I never knew about those before.

1. Suppose your gmail id is kingjacc@gmail.com, then you can aswell receive mails addressed to king.jacc@gmail.com, or k.ing.ja.cc@gmail.com or so. This is because the Gmail system just ignores any periods(.) in between your userid.
2. And here is another nice one. Again suppose your gmail id is kingjacc@gmail.com. Suppose you are using this id for some official use such as ‘customer feedback’or somehing. So now you can append any other word after your gmail id after a ‘+’ sign. So you can use the mail id ‘kingjacc+feedback@gmail.com‘ or ‘kingjacc+sports@gmail.com‘ or so. And if you want to forward to forward your mails addressed to ‘kingjacc+feedback@gmail.com‘ to another email id, if you need. You can configure this in the gmail settings > filters >

Is n’t it cool, checkout now.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Most of us keep more than one email id. We may be keeping one for personal communication, one for business communication etc. But it is really difficult to keep up with multiple email ids. You have to check all these ids for any incoming message or to send any mail from those.

But now with gmail, you can completely manage your other email ids with a single id. For the case of incoming messages, you can set to forward all the  messages coming to that id to your gmail id.(ie, if you configure to forward your emails, you can read emails sent to jacc@yahoo.com from jack202@gmail.com). So the problem of incoming mail is saved for now. You can find the mail forwarding option in gmail >> settings >>forwarding >>

And if you want to send a mail from another account, that is also possible with gmail. In Gmail >> Settings >> Accounts >> , you can configure other email ids. Gmail will send a confirmation message and once you confirm the ownership of the other email id, you can start sending emails from those ids from your accounts.That is., if you set jacc@intellwiz.com.com to be your additional email id, then after confirmation you can send emails ‘from saurabh@intellwiz.com‘, right from the gmail id- jacc202@gmail.com. Nice isn’t it?

Popularity: 13% [?]