How to Use Multiple Email Addresses

There are many reasons why having multiple email addresses can be useful, although it does mean more passwords to remember, more logins to lose track of etc. unless you use a password manager to keep track of them.

First of all, many people have separate business and personal email addresses as using one email address for both could be very confusing. If you work or volunteer for multiple organisations then you may have multiple ‘work’ email addresses.

Your personal email address is probably used for communicating with family, friends, colleagues and numerous people you don’t really know but have some dealings with.

Plus, it’s probably used for social media accounts, online shopping, financial transactions and a myriad of other purposes.

Your personal email address is also a security measure – if you forget your password on a website then it will have a ‘click for forgotten password’ link as people frequently forget passwords and the website will send a message to your email address that lets you create a new password.

This means that if a criminal gets hold of your email password (guessing them is easy for a high percentage of people) then she can change your passwords on multiple websites where you have an account and that can even become identity theft where the criminal can take out loans in your name etc. and you have the difficult task of proving your innocence.

Using one personal email address for financial activities, shopping online, social media, email etc. means only one login and password to worry about but also means that if that one email address and password is gained by scammers then you lose control of all of those things in one go.

You can create one email address for each website etc. but perhaps a more practical answer is to have one email address per type of use e.g. one for purely personal use and one for anything financial and one for social media usage and one for anything else.

People use multiple email addresses for such as:

  • An address for each business
  • Each financial activity – banks, credit cards, loan companies etc.
  • Social media
  • Registering on sites you suspect may spam you
  • Registering for downloads where you don’t want to be contacted afterwards
  • Signing up on any site that will send you Marketing messages

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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Stupidest Scam or Spam of the Week Pope Inu

You might think that it’s difficult to invent your own cybercurrency but it’s not really so difficult and many hundreds of people have done so, in some form.

They are extremely unlikely to become as valuable as say Bitcoin, but people make these for a variety of reasons.

One recent one is called Pope Inu and features a dog dressed like a Pope.

These are called meme coins meaning it’s based on an idea or theme.

The presale price for these coins was set at $0.0000001 per coin although the value once it’s in circulation depends on supply and demand.

People who understand cybercurrencies and these meme coins may want to buy into Pope Inu but anyone chasing a quick way to make money should steer clear as meme coins are more for fun and novelty than anyone actually making money.

If you receive emails or see adverts telling you there are riches to be made from these coins – ignore them.

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Scam Survey Calls

This is a variation on the common scam survey phone call, as received by Bob.

The caller pretends to from an official body and is calling due to concern about dangerous dust caused by the rock wool or other insulation in Bob’s loft.

He wants to arrange to carry out a survey today as he is in the area.

Bob told him that he doesn’t have such insulation so the caller switched to concern about cavity wall insulation instead.

When Bob also said he doesn’t have cavity walls, the caller gave up and hung up.

Bob did check and there is no official body looking into such things in his area.

Just a scammer.

These scammers have two likely ways to steal from you

  1. They get into your house to ‘case the joint’ and see if they can grab anything
  2. They carry out a fake survey then demand cash payment of an exorbitant fee.

If you have any concerns over your cavity wall insulation or similar then contact the council or call an expert but never deal with cold callers or people who send unsolicited emails.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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Can Victoria Track The Source of Her Cold Calls?

The journalist Victoria Bischoff was plagued by cold callers and wanted to find out how they had got her contact details. She started to investigate but didn’t expect it would take so much time and effort and that the result would involve so many organisations.

She started receiving cold calls to her mobile phone, including from Scottish Power and also lots of spam emails from companies she had never heard of.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws give you the right to ask where these companies get your contact details from, so she started making that request (called a subject access request).

e.g. one request led her to Prize Reactor then to The Secret For You then to Response Concepts then to Green Flamingo who then claimed she had entered a prize draw at 5:20 am one morning, so she knew this to be false.  The data that Green Flamingo had on her was all wrong except for the email address and mobile number.

Green Flamingo claimed by entering the prize draw she had agreed for her contact details to be sold to other companies.

All lies.

There is more to the story – but you can guess that unscrupulous organisations collect email addresses and phone numbers from websites, directories – anywhere they can get them and then add on guessed information such as which house number to match with a postcode.

By this means, information that is partly true and partly made-up circulates among businesses wanting to make money from your details or to send out emails, make cold calls etc.

It is time-consuming and difficult to track down how this happens as Victoria found out.

Don’t give out your personal information to any organisation or website or on social media unless you are sure it is safe. Even this doesn’t keep you safe though as many times these unscrupulous people simply find some information about you online and make-up the rest then sell it.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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