💬 Dot, dot, dot: Gmail ignores periods in an email address. Say yours is greatname@gmail.com. You’ll still get your messages if you type it as “great.name” or “grea.t.name.” That’s an easy way to create a quick alias for forms that don’t let you add a plus sign when making an account.
Tech fix: One household email makes sense
Ever wonder why you didn’t get that alert from the city telling you your water usage is high, or from your streaming service about a price increase (again), or from the landscaper, who needs your OK to replace the dead plants?
In most relationships, one person handles certain things and the other picks up the rest. For example, I order the groceries, handle all financial matters and, of course, oversee the tech in our lives. Barry deals with the contractors working around the house, our insurance for everything and our car collection.
When you live with someone, there are tons of decisions you make together — big ones, like “Should we buy a new house?” and smaller ones, like “Do you want chicken or salmon for dinner?” Then, there’s the question that lands somewhere in the middle: “What’s the login for Netflix again?”
The solution: A joint email account for shared services
This works great for us, so I wanted to share it with you as a way to simplify your tech life. Creating a joint email account is an easy way to make your shared life smoother. Here’s how it works:
- Pick your email platform. The where is up to you. If you’re both Gmail fans, go for that. Prefer Outlook or Yahoo? They work, too. Make sure to pick a platform you’re both comfortable using.
- Create a new email address. Choose a name that’s easy to remember and identifies the account as being for you both. It could be something like “LucyAndRickyHome” or “TheRicardoHousehold.” You can also go for a shared interest or inside joke both of you would recognize instantly.
- Set up forwarding and notifications. Make sure you both have access to this joint email account. You can set up forwarding rules so emails sent to the shared address are forwarded to your personal accounts, too. This way, you won’t miss important messages, even if you forget to check the shared inbox.
When to use the joint email
- Shared services: Subscriptions and memberships you both use, such as streaming services, grocery shopping and meal deliveries.
- Household accounts: Utility bills, mortgage payments, home maintenance services and anything else related to running the household.
- Finances: Bank accounts, loan information and credit card accounts where both of you need access to receive statements and notifications.
- School or kid-related accounts: If you have children, use this joint account for school communications, extracurricular activities and medical appointments.
- Caregivers: If you’re caring for an older adult or disabled family member, consider using one email account for pharmacy orders, medical updates and calendar notifications.
Keep your personal emails separate
While the joint account is handy for shared matters, it’s still important for you to have your own personal email account for individual interests and professional needs. Whether you’re catching up on Lucy’s job at the candy factory (wasn’t that the funniest skit?) or choosing who manages home insurance, you’ve got an email setup that works for everyone.
A little Lucille Ball wisdom to leave you with: “A man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.” 😂
Don’t get left behind – Stay tech ahead
Award-winning host Kim Komando is your secret weapon for navigating tech.
- National radio show: Find your local station or listen to the podcast
- Daily newsletter: Join 575,000 people who read The Current (free!)
- Watch: On Kim’s YouTube channel
- Podcast: “Kim Komando Today” – Listen wherever you get podcasts
So much data left exposed for anyone to see
Another day, another monumental data breach. Just because they’re getting more common doesn’t mean you can tune it out. In fact, it’s time to get even more serious about your private information and what’s posted online.
Get instant disposable email addresses
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Working the system: Cybercriminals are using hacked government and law enforcement email addresses to request customer data from Big Tech companies. Police usually need a search warrant for files and messages, but for basic details like phone numbers, login credentials and approximate locations, a request is all it takes.
Who makes the most money per year in radio? Is it … A.) Ryan Seacrest, B.) Glenn Beck, C.) Sean Hannity or D.) Howard Stern?
31M email addresses
Exposed in a Needless Markup Neiman Marcus breach. The retailer’s original report said only 64,472 people were affected. See if yours is one of them at haveibeenpwned.com.
3 secrets about email marketing and sending your own newsletters
Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach your target audience. It helps send personalized messages straight to your ideal customer’s inbox. Don’t overlook it when planning cross-channel campaigns. If you’re new to email marketing, use these three strategies for success.
How to mute an email thread so it stops showing up in your Gmail inbox
So you want to stop seeing someone’s emails in your inbox but don’t want to block them. Maybe a coworker is hounding you, and you’d rather get to their emails later so you can focus on more pressing issues. In that case, you should know how to mute people in Gmail.
Synthetic identity fraud: That’s when scammers steal a kid’s Social Security number and add bogus names, birth dates and email addresses to create fake personas. They open credit cards, max them out and leave a trail of debt. Have a kid age 13 or younger? Fill out this form to see if they have a credit report. Freeze it if they do.
It took one bad click to hack the personal details of 7.6 million individuals, including full names, email addresses, telephone numbers and order details. The breached org? Evolve Bank & Trust, a vendor for Affirm, Wise, Bilt, Shopify, Plaid, Stripe and Mercury. There’s a good chance that hacked info includes yours. Solid, award-winning antivirus software is more important than ever, folks.
🚨 180,000 Shopify users just had their data compromised, thanks to a third-party app. The exposed info includes account IDs, names, email addresses, cellphone numbers and total spending. If you have a Shopify account, watch for any legit-looking emails from them and don’t give out any personal info.
🚨 Homebuyers, beware: A New Jersey couple was duped out of $32,500 when trying to buy their dream home. Scammers faked an entire email thread with their lawyer, the seller’s lawyer and the real estate agent. They wired the down payment to crooks. The scam email addresses were one letter off from the real ones. Wowsie, watch out if you’re buying or selling a home.
361 million
Stolen email addresses found in the Have I Been Pwned database. Type in yours to find out if you were part of any recent data breaches. If so, it’s time for a password change — and stay on high alert for scams.
Everything but your autograph: Ticketmaster was hacked, with cyber thieves snagging 500 million customer details. That includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, financial details and full order histories, now up for sale on a sketchy dark web forum for a cool $500,000. Get ready for a spam influx, and be extra cautious of what links you click from an email or text.
🇺🇸 Patriot Mobile’s big breach: The self-proclaimed “Christian conservative wireless provider” exposed its cellphone customers’ info, including full names, email addresses, ZIP codes and account PINs. Hard to ignore the timing on this one … If you’re a subscriber, update your login info ASAP.
Excel at this: Say you’re using Microsoft Excel, and you have a list of employees’ names in column A (e.g., John Doe, Jane Smith and Emily Jones), but you need to give them standard email addresses in column B. In column B, next to their name in column A, type the corresponding email address — think “jdoe@company.com” for the “John Doe” in column A. Now, the magic: Click on the cell where you typed the email address, and then press Ctrl + E. Excel will automatically “flash fill” the column with email addresses following your pattern.
Records for 21 million VPN users leaked online - Check your data now
Almost everything you search for, sign in to, or look at is trackable when you browse the internet. Your online activity and location logs are most likely kept somewhere, at least by your ISP. Your ISP sees everything you do online. Tap or click here to stop it.
Tech how-to: Manage all your email addresses in one spot
Email has seriously sped up communications in work settings and in our personal lives. It’s really convenient — unless you have multiple email addresses.
Between needing different addresses for work and your personal life, you can have a lot of messages to check, ranging in degrees from crucial to spam. It can be hard to stay on top of it all.
How to make sure important email isn’t marked as spam in Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo, AOL
The perks of email messaging made modern-day communications instantaneous and easy to deploy. Tap or click here for Gmail alternatives. But these same conveniences also makes it a trivial matter for spammers to duplicate and massively send out millions of junk email in seconds.