Switching email accounts? Avoid these annoying pitfalls
Q: I’ve had my email address for a long time. Over the years, the amount of spam I am receiving has become overwhelming. I would like to set up a new email account and was wondering what my best options would be to make sure I don’t lose any email or lose contact with my friends and family.
A: Setting up a new email account can be challenging. Getting everyone you correspond with to use your new address will be difficult, and updating any services that are tied to your current email will take time.
That being said, there are some things that will mitigate some of the pitfalls.
If it were me, I would set up a Gmail account. Gmail has amazing spam filtering capabilities and has kept my inbox nice and tidy for many years.
Once you set up your Gmail account, you should investigate whether your current email provider offers email forwarding. Yahoo, Comcast and others will let you do this. It’s just a matter of finding the instructions, which are usually posted in their support pages.
If you can enable forwarding from your current email address to your new Gmail account, you will see all of your messages that are sent to your old email account, but Gmail should block any of the spam messages when the email passes through their filters.
Once this is all working properly, you will have your email in two locations: your old account and your new account.
Then it’s just a matter of emailing all of your contacts to let them know your new address and updating your online services.
When you’re confident everything is working as you like and that everyone knows where to reach you, you can then disable forwarding on your old email account and disconnect your old account from your email program, if you are using one.
Please note that while I recommend Gmail, you can set up a new email account with any service you like. But in my experience, there is no other service that is quite as good at spam filtering as Gmail.
While your new address is going to be practically spam-free just because it’s new, over time it may find its way onto spam lists, and you could be right back where you started.
Q: I received an email advertising something that will allegedly get instant access to live over-the-air TV programs. The product is intriguing, but it seems like the proverbial toogood-to-be-true type of thing. Do you have any knowledge of it?
A: It’s an advertisement for an HD antenna. All broadcast stations still broadcast over the air, and they even broadcast in HD, but you need an HD antenna to receive the signal. Think of it as rabbit ears for the modern age.
I would never buy a product like this from a spammer, but you can pick up an HD antenna from places like Amazon for between $20 and $50.
You can learn more about this at tinyurl.com/helplineantenna.