Notes from the mail room.

Try to open a new account at most large email providers and you will be asked for a phone number before you see an inbox. The stated reason is usually security. The practical effect is that your new address is tied to…

An email alias is a second address that delivers into the same inbox as your main one. Mail sent to the alias arrives next to everything else, but the sender never learns your real address. It sounds like a small…

A private mailbox protects what you store. It does not, on its own, hide the fact that you are using it. Your internet provider, your employer's network or anyone watching the connection can see that you visited your…

Webmail is convenient, but many people prefer a desktop or phone mail app: offline access, one inbox for several accounts, and an interface they already know. Neir works with any client that speaks IMAP, POP3 and SMTP,…

Almost every mail provider now calls itself encrypted. The word covers very different things: the connection to a website, the link between mail servers, the way messages sit on disk, or true end-to-end encryption where…

Many marketing emails, and a growing number of personal ones, contain an image you never see. It is usually a single transparent pixel. Its only job is to tell the sender that you opened the message, when you did, and…

Coal miners once carried canaries underground. If dangerous gas built up, the bird showed it first, and its silence was the warning. A warrant canary works on the same principle: a statement that is only meaningful…

Most phishing emails are easy to dismiss. The dangerous ones look exactly like a message from someone you already deal with: your bank, your landlord, a colleague, a supplier. The trick is usually in the sender's…

Every photo taken on a phone carries more than the picture. Hidden inside the file is a block of metadata, usually called EXIF, which can include exactly where the photo was taken, when, and on which device. Send that…