Separate email accounts

[paulsiu]

I always used an email account for vendors and then a separate one for other stuff like finance and a separate one for personal stuff. The reason is that when I sign up for vendor, I always end up with tons of spam.

I am thinking about setting up a family account to handle bills. I was curious, how do fellow bogleheads segregate accounts?

Paul

[Sidney]

I have a third account that is only for financial institutions.

[JamesSFO]

Ultimately I found having multiple email addresses more trouble than it was worth.

[sscritic]

I used to have six email accounts, but some don't work anymore. At one point I signed up for an msn account just because I heard they were going to go away, but after two years of not using it, Microsoft won't let me in. There is a procedure to recover your password, but you have to login to get it (I have always found Microsoft to be particularly brilliant in this respect). The offered me the chance to open a Windows Live account (I think that is what it was), but I refused; I only wanted my msn account back. I also had an account from a cable provider that I had seven years ago; it kept working four years after I moved and no longer had them as my ISP. Now I am down to three primary accounts: yahoo, gmail, and one other.

Come to think of it, I don't really separate my email as carefully as you seem to be thinking of, as my primary primary account gets used for financial stuff plus personal emails. Bogleheads uses one of the other accounts as I don't want bogleheads messing with my finances.

[vectorizer]

I go to extremes with this, especially since so many web sites insist on using your verified email address as a username. I have a paid Yahoo Plus email account that lets me create a virtually unlimited number of email addresses of the form

Code: Select all

format: {fixed prefix for me}{variable name}@yahoo.com
example: myprefix-justforbogleaheads@yahoo.com

Regularly, even vendors that should be reliable let my email address get loose and I start getting spammed to the email address I gave them -- in which case I just delete the address (and no longer do business with the offending vendor).

[ohiost90]

I don't get hung up on spam. But then I don't get too much of it. I find yahoo and gmail do respectable at filtering spam. To me, having seperate email accounts would be like having seperate post boxes.

[midareff]

I have a yahoo for the real junk, a hotmail for the semi junk, a gmail for friends and a ISP email for financial and closer relatives who are not overly familiar with the forward button.

[Sidney]

I don't get hung up on spam. But then I don't get too much of it. I find yahoo and gmail do respectable at filtering spam. To me, having seperate email accounts would be like having seperate post boxes.

The issue isn't spam. It is security. Some financial institutions use your email address to send password resets. I keep a separate email for fins and it is never used for anything other than fins -- not even to send mail. It also has an unbelievable ugly password to get in. I don't even allow my IPOD Touch to get into it.

[mlewis]

If you have gmail you can link all your separate accounts. You can be logged on to all at once. You can also be logged on to one but still send/receive from the others if you want.
Use the LG companies for their products, not their stock.

malcolm

[bUU]

I go to extremes with this, especially since so many web sites insist on using your verified email address as a username. I have a paid Yahoo Plus email account that lets me create a virtually unlimited number of email addresses of the form

Code: Select all

format: {fixed prefix for me}{variable name}@yahoo.com
example: myprefix-justforbogleaheads@yahoo.com

Regularly, even vendors that should be reliable let my email address get loose and I start getting spammed to the email address I gave them -- in which case I just delete the address (and no longer do business with the offending vendor).

I do something similar to this, though admittedly I'm not as religious about it as I should be.

[ataloss]

my bank accommodates alerts to one account (deposit credited, balance below, large transaction ) and password resets to another. I give all my financial accounts a gmail address that is set to 2 factor authentication (with trusted computers) Junk vendors and personal go to Hotmail. Probably I should try to split the hotmail account but I am not sure it is worth it. The hotmail email is a firstnamelastname@hotmail.com account and is easy for my contacts to remember.

[JupiterJones]

I use Apple's "mail" program on my Mac. It checks/downloads/sends from all my accounts, and I can view the email together or by account.

JJ

[dm200]

I have several email accounts - works well. You never know when one is not functioning, for some reason.

For a small organization I manage, I have 3 - with one specifically used for non-critical stuff. That keeps the junk from clogging up the critical things. Somehow, one of my email accounts has me "targeted" as a member of a particular racial.ethnic minority that I am not. Another email has me targeted as a member of a certain religion, which I am not. Interesting what different emails I get on those two accounts.

[ejvyas]

Gmail email trick works great for me

[Sidney]

Gmail email trick works great for me

This is still one account. If someone gets into it, they can see everything. It does nothing to isolate usage to a specific account.

[dad2000]

I have several email accounts, all managed from one email client. I also host my own email accounts, as I don't like all that information "in the cloud".

[Sidney]

I have several email accounts, all managed from one email client. I also host my own email accounts, as I don't like all that information "in the cloud".

Isn't it all still out there sitting in some SMTP server somewhere?

[dad2000]

I have several email accounts, all managed from one email client. I also host my own email accounts, as I don't like all that information "in the cloud".

Isn't it all still out there sitting in some SMTP server somewhere?

SMTP is the protocol used to transfer email between servers. Incidentally, most financial institutions do encrypt the email while in SMTP transit.

I'm referring to the servers that actually store the email. The messages are strongly encrypted and only accessible with a private key. It's not feasible for most people to host their own, but I happen to have the resources, so why not?

[mike143]

I have had my own domain/email for over 9 years now, important things go there. I have one email/user account I use with that. I have a email.com account that I had from when I was in high school, graduated 2001, this my junk email. I have a work email and a school email because they are required and only used for those purposes. I have a gmail email account due to Android requirements. My personal domain email is through godaddy.com and has a software program that interfaces with it that allows a tray icon to prompt as new email comes in and directly open the web mail. This is the email I "check" several times a day. I was also able to pickup a .com domain with my first and last name, example: jackbogle.com, which has the following email, example: email@jackbogle.com. I would say having a personal domain is the way to go, for $10 a year you get your domain and one email/user account.

[lightheir]

2 accounts for me, one general-purpose, one for nothing but financials and only accessed on my home computer.

Both double-authenticated security with Gmail, so probably as reasonably good as you can get security for a cloud system without overly encumbering access.

Has worked great. Spam has been a complete nonissue for the financial account (the inbox stays empty.)

[ohiost90]

I don't get hung up on spam. But then I don't get too much of it. I find yahoo and gmail do respectable at filtering spam. To me, having seperate email accounts would be like having seperate post boxes.

The issue isn't spam. It is security. Some financial institutions use your email address to send password resets. I keep a separate email for fins and it is never used for anything other than fins -- not even to send mail. It also has an unbelievable ugly password to get in. I don't even allow my IPOD Touch to get into it.

Why not have your single and only email account have an unbelievable, ugly password?

[Sidney]

I don't get hung up on spam. But then I don't get too much of it. I find yahoo and gmail do respectable at filtering spam. To me, having seperate email accounts would be like having seperate post boxes.

The issue isn't spam. It is security. Some financial institutions use your email address to send password resets. I keep a separate email for fins and it is never used for anything other than fins -- not even to send mail. It also has an unbelievable ugly password to get in. I don't even allow my IPOD Touch to get into it.

Why not have your single and only email account have an unbelievable, ugly password?

I only access the fins email via a bootable Linux USB drive that I keep at home. No remote access, no smartphone etc. Having separate email accounts makes it easier to do common email. Plus, I never send email from the fins email account. It is receive-only and not a Gmail account since Google searches Gmail content. Finally, the email account is also "ugly" -- ie. ugly_name@domain.com whereas for common email I can use sidney@domain.com.

[Sunny Sarkar]

The reason is that when I sign up for vendor, I always end up with tons of spam.

One possible way to avoid spam from unimportant web signups is using a temporary email http://10minutemail.com to signup. It self destructs after 10 minutes.