Q: I have a Wave Broadband email deal with, which I have had for 20 years. Recently all of my accounts related to that email have been compromised so I tried to change my password solely to discover out after a number of telephone calls that I am unable to achieve this as my email deal with is outdated and Wave Broadband not helps password modifications (though they modified my password for me).
So my query to you is what email suppliers do you advocate for safety? I do all of my enterprise by this email and am searching for one thing safer than Gmail.
— Mary Jane Power
A: The main free email service suppliers — together with Google Gmail and Microsoft Outlook.com — are literally comparatively safe. I say comparatively as a result of whereas they provide a great deal of safety towards outsiders making an attempt to hack your account, some email service suppliers, together with Google, have been criticized for mining account holders’ email for data. Google has mentioned it’s not doing this. You can consider that … or not.
But an important steps to securing your email are ones you may take your self.
- Make positive to use a powerful password. Easy-to-guess passwords are additionally simple to crack. Hackers have applications that may run by hundreds of attainable passwords in seconds.
- Use 2-step verification, whether it is out there. (And it’s out there for Gmail and Outlook.com.) Yes, meaning having to take an additional step while you log in, but it surely does add safety.
- When you’re on public Wi-Fi, use a digital non-public community (VPN) to conceal your transmissions — together with passwords you might enter — from prying eyes. The draw back? VPNs can scale back efficiency.
- Consider utilizing a service or add-on to encrypt your messages.
- Keep a watch out for phishing emails. Don’t click on on any hyperlinks in emails until you acknowledge and know and belief the sender.
Gmail, by the best way, encrypts your emails whereas they’re in transit utilizing a protocol known as Transport Layer Security (TLS). That protects your message after it leaves your outbox and till it goes into your recipient’s inbox. The recipient additionally has to have an email service that helps TLS for this to work and most service suppliers do help it.
I’m not suggesting that you just take all of those steps. (Personally, I make use of all of the steps besides utilizing a third-party encryption service.) All of those steps contain some degree of inconvenience, so which of them you utilize actually relies upon upon simply how safe you want your email to be. If you’re sending delicate data — equivalent to monetary knowledge — I do advocate encrypting emails both by an encryption service or by at all times utilizing a VPN.
Of course, even utilizing all these safety measures your emails can nonetheless be learn by no matter email service supplier you’re utilizing. If you want extra safety you’d want to arrange your personal email server so that you could train much more management. That’s an costly possibility that requires a bit of experience.
Q: Around the primary week of February, I tried to replace Win 7 Ultimate and I obtained one other choice which had by no means proven up earlier than. Clicking it, downloaded Win 10 Pro. It put in with none issues. I’m nonetheless utilizing Win 7 Ultimate, although, as a result of I can not appear to set up the Office 365 contacts record through the export of the. PPT file. The Office 365 license is similar and all options on the Win 10 machine work, it simply refuses to import the file. Suggestions?
— Jeff
A: Actually, there are two methods to export an Outlook 365 contact record: both as an Outlook knowledge file (PST) or as a comma separated values (CSV) file. If you’re going to be exporting the record to carry it into one other set up of Outlook, put it aside as an Outlook knowledge file. If you’re going to be importing the knowledge into one other program, choose the CSV possibility.
