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If you use both the email client Mozilla Thunderbird and Google Mail (Gmail) you might need a way to keep both address books in sync so that they can be accessed from both software programs. It’s unfortunately not that easy to synchronize the address books with the default options at hand.

When I starting using Gmail I was surprised that the service would not make use of a secure connection between my computer and the service which was a pressing matter because I was using several other Google services that were requiring https to connect. It felt strange and out of place that Gmail did not require https.

I only glimpsed over the Lifehacker article in the Brief Firefox add-on and only the mail from Dark Kosmos made me change my mind. Google has added a very interesting feature to Gmail called Labs which is accessible in the account options. Labs is basically a testing ground for Gmail add-ons that are not yet ready for prime time. You can be sure that most will work without difficulties though but Google does not want to take any chances.

I read about this tip yesterday at Digital Inspiration and when I woke up today I saw that Lifehacker wrote about it as well. The tip mainly stated that users who signed up for Gmail would not get one but two mail addresses: user@gmail.com and user@googlemail.com. The suggestion was to give on out to friends and use the other for all the other signups and conversations on the Internet.

Most users that I know have several email accounts at various email providers. I’m using about ten email accounts actively in Thunderbird and web interfaces and always thought that there must be a way to sync the contact information. Late last night I discovered the Zindus (via Download Squad) Thunderbird extension which syncs the Gmail (and Google Reader, Google Calendar) contacts with the Thunderbird address book.

Do not publish your email on the Internet. That’s is one of the first lessons to learn when you start using the Internet. Once your email has been cached by a search engine it will sooner or later be discovered by bots that crawl the Internet for this valuable information.
All kinds of protection have been created to prevent this from happening. Some suggest using images instead of text, many obscure their emails in the hope that the bots will not be able to identify the right one and others are not publishing their mail at all.

The award for the longest title ever could go to this one. But it’s good news actually. Both Email services are “supporting email authentication standards including DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to verify senders and help identify forged messages” for a few years now but could not eliminate all phishing emails because of companies signing their mails only partly. The filter was therefor not perfect which still meant that users were seeing phishing emails in their inboxes and spam folders.

I covered the email provider Akapost about ten days ago and liked what it had to offer. It was not your usual Gmail / Yahoo Mail kind of provider but one that would put an end to email spam to your mail inbox. This was achieved by acting as a proxy between the user’s email account and the destinations.

Google Mail introduced a new feature recently that can be helpful in finding out if someone else has or had access to your Gmail account. The function is a bit hidden in the footer area of Gmail after you log in. Just scroll down to the bottom until you reach the line at the bottom starting with Last account activity.
Gmail provides information about the time of the last login and which IP has been used to login to the account. A Details link is available at the end of the line which opens a popup window with further information.