PATREONItems tagged with Email
When sending an email or message to someone, it is nice to know that the receiver got the message and read it. This is why we have read receipts in text messaging that gives senders a checkmark to say the receiver got the message. However, email clients for the most part do not have that functionality, at least not unless the recipient chooses to acknowledge a receipt request. This is the reason some email senders, especially in marketing organizations, add a "spy pixel," which raises some obvious privacy concerns. Spy pixels, email pixels, or tracking pixels are typically 1-pixel images hidden among email elements. They can be impossible to see by the average user, and even email security...
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In the rush to plug up security holes and introduce new features, it is not uncommon for Microsoft's updates to inadvertently break things. We have covered numerous instances of this over the past several weeks. Here is one more you can add to the pile—there is an apparent bug in Microsoft's Mail and Calendar app that is wreaking havoc on Gmail accounts. The Mail and Calendar app is a Universal Windows Program (UWP) app available in the Microsoft Store. It has mostly positive reviews, with a 4.4 star rating out of 5 stars from 2,059 people who have taken the time to vote. But like any program, it is not without the occasional issue, and this latest one is creating headaches for some people....
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The psychics at Microsoft are working on implementing a predicative text feature to the web version of Outlook. As you begin composing an email, the feature will attempt at what you most likely are aiming to write, and will "suggest words for phrases" that you can quickly input if applicable, or of course ignore if they miss the mark. When typing a message and suggested text appears, users can press the Tab key or the Right arrow key to roll with the crystal ball prediction. Otherwise, users can effectively ignore the suggested text by simply continuing to type their message, at which point the suggested text will take the hint and perform a disappearing act. It remains to be seen how well it...
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Microsoft is taking additional steps to protect users and organizations from a phenomenon known as a "Reply All Storm" in Exchange online. The company first launched Reply All Storm Protection for large organizations in 2019, and protection is now rolling out to Office 365 globally. A Reply All Storm is something that many have never heard of. There are many names for this phenomenon, including "email storm" or "reply allpocalypse." Essentially the Reply All Storm that Microsoft is aiming to prevent happens when a large number of users on an email distribution list respond to emails with the reply all button. On a list with enough addresses, the reply all deluge can generate millions of email...
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As we have said before, these are challenging times as we all adapt to the reality of a deadly virus and keeping our distance from one another to slow its spread. Making matters worse, nefarious actors are pouncing on the opportunity to spread malware. This means you need to be extra cautious about falling for a phishing scam. It's a numbers game for malware authors. Google shared some interesting stats, saying Gmail weeds out and blocks more than 100 million phishing emails every day. During the past week, Google says it saw 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19. "This is in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related daily spam messages. Our ML [machine learning]...
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These are tough times for sure, and to make matters worse, a hacking group managed to infiltrate an email service in Italy and swipe the personal data of more than 600,000 users. The data, which is said to include plaintext passwords and contents of email messages, is for sale on the dark web for between 0.5 and 3 Bitcoin (around $3,500 to $22,000). The culprits go by the name of NN (No Name) Hacking Group. They swiped the data from Email.it, then promoted it on Twitter. The group claims it breached the email service's data center two years ago, in January 2018, and asked for a bug bounty. "They refused to talk with us and continued to trick their users/customers. They didn't contacted (sic)...
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Google has announced a change for Gmail that will allow users to send emails as attachments. The update enables users to drag and drop the email they want to attach to their new message. Another way to attach an email to a new email thread is to select the emails with the check boxes on the left of messages and then click the three dots at the top of the screen and choose "Forward as attachment." Replying to an existing thread is supported by using the pop-out reply button. Google says that it has heard from users that sometimes attaching emails makes more sense than forwarding separate emails. One example is in instances where users want to forward multiple messages related to a single topic....
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For anyone who uses IFTTT (If This Then That), a free web-based service to create chains of simple conditional statements via applets, be aware that Gmail integration is about to be broken in a big way. Simply put, every IFTTT action and trigger for Gmail will stop working at the end of the month, save for "Send and email" and "Send yourself an email." Those are the only two functions that will remain. Everything else has been marked as "inactive," and as a result, many IFTTT applets that use those functions have already stopped working. The rest will join them on March 31. March 31 is when Google will implement previously announced changes to its API ecosystem. Unfortunately for IFTTT users,...
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Google has already given its popular Gmail service a visual and functional overhaul, having refreshed the design in April of last year. It's also steadily been adding new features, such as Smart Compose and a native offline mode. Perhaps even better, Google is adding more options to the right-click context menu in Gmail. This is going to impact all G Suite users, who will have access to a wealth of more options with right-click on a Gmail message. Users will be able to reply to or forward an email with a single click from the main page, search for all emails from a particular sender, search for all emails with the same subject (if conversation mode is turned off), open multiple emails in multiple...
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In a letter sent to US lawmakers, Google reaffirmed its policy of allowing third-party app developers to access private information belonging to Gmail users, so long as the developers are upfront about the data they are collecting. It comes with the territory of allowing third-party apps to integrate with Gmail, as ultimately it is up to the users to make sure they fully understand exactly what permissions they are granting. The policy has drawn increased attention over the past several weeks, especially in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Back at the beginning of July, Google felt compelled to pen a blog post discussing security and privacy within Gmail. The company insisted that...
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Are you concerned about who might be reading your emails? You should be, especially if you allow third-party app developers to access your Gmail account, as many of them request. A recent report highlighted the extent of which third-party app developers can access private information, prompting Google to respond with what amounts to a soothing message saying, 'There, there, everything will be okay'. Google is not necessarily wrong, either, provided you are tech savvy enough to understand the risks associated with giving a third-party app certain permissions, and know how to take control of your privacy settings. The latter is not always straightforward—we have laid out the steps for preventing...
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Google is continually making improvements to its Gmail service, and more recently it introduced a couple of new features that many people will find handy. One of those is native offline mail support so that users don't have to rely on third-party software or any special extensions, and the other is Smart Compose, a predicative text feature that Google unveiled at its recent Google I/O event. Predicative text is not a new technology, it's just new to Gmail as a native feature. What it does is suggest words, phrases, and even entire sentences that fit within the context of what you're typing. "Smart Compose helps save you time by cutting back on repetitive writing, while reducing the chance of...
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Security researchers are warning anyone who uses PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or S/MIME for email encryption to disable the scheme in their email clients right away, and to uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email, due to a security flaw. They've discovered a critical vulnerability dubbed EFAIL that could allow an attacker to view the contents of encrypted messages in plaintext, including emails that have been sent in the past. "There are currently no reliable fixes for the vulnerability. If you use PGP/GPG or S/MIME for very sensitive communication, you should disable it in your email client now," Sebastian Schinzel, a professor of computer security at FH Münster, stated...
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Microsoft has added new features to Outlook on Windows, Mac, web, and mobile devices. The software giant says that the changes are meant to help users manage their time and keep important stuff up front where it is easy to find. There are new features coming to Outlook for iOS and Android devices soon to help connect users to people, apps, and tech that improve productivity in the business environment. Among the changes are bill pay reminders in Outlook Calendar with the addition of bill payments to events that the calendar already tracks for users like travel reservations and package deliveries. Outlook can identify the bills you receive via email and then give a summary at the top of the message...
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Google has rolled out the long-awaited update for Gmail that users will find quite interesting. One of the main goals in the redesign was to allow users to do more without leaving their inbox. This means you can now do open photos and other attachments without having to open the email or scroll through long conversations. A new snooze button also allows you to put off emails you don’t have time for and you can access other Google apps like Calendar, Tasks, and Keep more easily. For those times when you are busy and forgot to reply to something important, Gmail will now "nudge" you with reminders to follow-up and respond to messages that appear next to the emails in your inbox. Smart Reply...
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Several years ago, spammers figured out they could fill up a user's Google Calendar with advertisements and other unwanted messages by sending them out as event invites. The issue has largely flown under the radar, but unfortunately for some Google Home owners, the exploit (if you want to call it that) is preventing them from receiving legitimate notifications over their smart speaker, turning what was a nuisance into a major problem. We were alerted about the issue from Micah Stroud, a former NVIDIA employee who sent us an email detailing his frustration with the situation. "For the past three months I've been living with an out of control spammer in my house: it comes from Google Home. According...
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Most of you reading this have probably at some point been contacted by someone claiming you are the beneficiary in a will of a Nigerian prince. As the scam goes, all you have to do is submit your personal information and Western Union some funds to process the necessary paperwork, and in return you will receive hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. One of the people behind the popular scam, Michael Neu, has been arrested by police in Slidell, Louisiana. This may come as a shocker, but Neu is not a prince, nor is he Nigerian. He is a 67-year-old male possibly of German descent (based on his last name) who is facing 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering for his alleged role...
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As part of a recent case study, Google teamed up with the University of California, Berkeley, to better understand how hijackers attempt to take over email and social networking accounts. As any thirty-something who grew up watching G.I. Joe cartoons can attest, knowing is half the battle. So, after learning the most common methods for hijacking, Google has some tips on how Gmail users can protect their accounts from outside threats. Hijacking is a common problem, with more 15 percent of Internet users having reported experiencing the takeover of an email or social networking account. From March 2016 to March 2017, Google and UC Berkley analyzed several black markets to see how hijackers steal...
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Here is some good news for Gmail users—living up to its promise earlier this year, Google today expanded the potential capabilities of Gmail by launching native support for third-party add-ons. Now users can tap into services such as Asana, Dialpad, Hire, Intuit QuickBooks Invoicing, and others right from within their inbox, negating the need to toggle between the inbox and other apps. "With Gmail Add-ons, your inbox can contextually surface your go-to app based on messages you receive to help you get things done faster. And because add-ons work the same across web and Android, you only need to install them once to access them on all of your devices," Google stated in a blog post. Google previously...
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Have you ever noticed that if you mention a product in email, it has a way of translating over to ads? In some cases, it might be a coincidence. But if you use Gmail, there is a much higher chance that Google scanned the contents of your email, picked up on a keyword, and delivered a targeted ad based on what you wrote. Oh, you didn't know? Google does in fact sift through the contents of your Gmail, though starting soon, it will stop doing that. Google is looking to bring its consumer-based Gmail service in line with its G Suite for businesses, the latter of which includes a version of Gmail that does not get scanned in order to personalize ads.Image Source: Flickr (C.E. Kent) "G Suite’s Gmail...
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Most of us could probably stand to be a little bit more organized, whether it's remembering to pick up milk on the way home or making sure not to miss little Katie's recital right after turning in those blueprints to the boss at noon. That is where digital assistants can be useful. Cortana is one of them and Microsoft is making its smarty pants AI even more helpful by having her hold you accountable to what you say in emails. "Cortana already gives you reminders for people, places and times, and helps you make and manage to-do lists so you don’t forget a thing. Now, Cortana can help you remember things you’ve said you would do in your emails—without you even having to ask," Microsoft explains...
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The growing consensus is that the U.S. government is overstepping its bounds and trampling on people's right to privacy. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the government's vast spying program, and while that was an eye opener for the country (and world) at large, the full extent of its efforts are still coming to light. The most recent example is the email scanner Yahoo built under the direction of the NSA and FBI.Developed in secret, the email scanner was found to be a sophisticated hacking tool, or rootkit, as some experts have classified it. The email scanner gave the U.S. government the ability to spy on millions of Yahoo Mail users without their knowledge or consent....
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