by Rocky

Weird Email Reply
I sent an email to the recipients of a particular email group. In a short while, I was surprised to get this short reply: “l received your email and thank you for the same. I shall reply to it as soon as possible.” The surprise is that the sender of the email is a priest who died a year ago. When I got over my shock, I realized that the email I received is an Auto-Reply he had set in his email account.

The How-to of Email
OFFICIAL EMAIL ID and personal email ID should be differentiated. The personal email ID should be used only for personal communication; and all the official communication should be through an official email ID, like Principal, Provincial, and so on. In the official email ID, one should not use the personal name in the ID or in the NAME while creating and or changing the email setting. Let us take, e,g.: Fr. Paul <provinciaI_mm@gmail.com>. Here Fr. Paul is the name of the provincial at the time of creating the email ID. So, it is better if the official email ID is ‘Fr. Provincial MM’. The official email ID should be used by the successors in the office; each successor should also change the password.

REPLY-TO for an email is set, only in case we need the reply to be sent to a different email ID other than the one we are using. Without knowing this, some of us have set the same email ID for reply-to as well. Unknowingly, many of us set a wrong ‘reply-to” email ID, may be with a spelling mistake; and later worry about not getting any reply for the email we sent, where the replies are either reaching elsewhere or nowhere.

SIGNATURE is set to be sent along with all the emails sent by us. It should not be too long or too big, that is, it should have the minimum necessary information about the sender. We should also remember not to repeat the same information at the end of our email when a signature is set, as it will be seen twice in an email.

AUTO RESPONSE or VACATION MAIL should be used:
(i) only for official email and surely not for personal email,
(ii) when we are away from the computer or email or internet connection, to keep the sender informed about the delay in responding, and (iii) not just as a greeting to all who send us email. This has to be set for only a particular span of time, that is, the last day should also be specified. We do mistake this setting as a signature and set only our signature in this vacation mail. Vacation mail should have the information, such as, the duration after which we would be able to reply.

FORWARDING option can be used to redirect our emails to another email ID for a specific reason and period, during vacation or any other official trip. Forwarding is also useful when we change our email ID to a new email ID; and still want to get the emails received in the old email ID to the new one.

FILTER can be set to move the emails you receive to respective folders including SPAM; and BLOCK option can be used to block emails from specific email IDs. which is already moved to the SPAM.

Email Maintenance
CHECK your email periodically, even if you are not receiving many emails, in order to avoid flooding of emails and accumulating it in the inbox. This will also help us in reading the emails and responding to it. whereas viewing too many emails at the same time in our inbox will decrease our interest in doing so.

SIGN OUT completely, especially when you are checking your email in a common computer, or someone else’s computer, or at a browsing center. It is always advisable to sign out or log out completely, once we finish using the email.

FOLDERS or LABELS can be created to categorize our email and store it for further usage. Having all the emails received in the inbox will not be helpful when we are searching for a particular (or set of) email.

PASSWORD for accessing email account should be easy to remember. Or it can also be noted down somewhere confidentially. It is recommended to change the password of the email account periodically— at least once in a month. The password of the official email ID should be changed along with the alternate / recovery email and the contact number, when a new person starts using the email.

CLEAR EMAILS periodically to create enough space for the new emails to be received. What we do not notice or escapes from our mind are the emails sent or received with attachments that occupy more space in our email server. Deleting those emails from our Sent, Spam and Trash or Bin, as well as the unwanted emails, will free more space at any given time.

Responses
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT to any email received can be sent with minimum necessary message and the date or duration for the full reply for the email. The acknowledgement should be sent individually, based on the email received and not an Auto-Reply option.

REPLY to each email is appropriate. Do not merely stop with an acknowledgement. The reply to each email should cover for all the points in the received email. While replying to an email, one should verify whether the reply is for the sender or for all in the recipient list; and the email should be marked accordingly using CC and BCC in the recipient list.

VIRUS ATTACK or HACKED email account should be handled properly in order to prevent further issues or problems like this. Most often we will not be able to identity whether our email account is affected by a virus or hacking. It can only be reported to us by the recipient of our email with some anonymous message, triggered automatically from our email account to all in our contact list. Once reported, you have to take the following cautious measures:

(1) Log-in to your email account and check the alternate/ recovery email ID and contact number set in it. If they are changed, provide your present and valid contact information. (As these could have been changed by the hacker, in order to receive the updating information and password to his/her contact).

– Then, change your password.
– Delete all the sent emails that are triggered automatically after hacking or virus  attack.
– For the next one week, log-in to your email account; check the alternate / recovery   email ID and contact number; and change the password—everyday-
– Then you may continue to do the same once a week, until you are confident that your email account is hassle free.

OR

(2) Create a new email ID and set the forwarding option from the old email ID to the new.
–  Use only the new email ID; and reply to all the emails from it
–  You may also delete all the emails from the old email ID after sending the important emails to the new email ID.
(This article appeared in Magnet – November 2019 (Pgs 34-35)

Rocky is a techie with 28 years of experience in the technologies that interact with humans, as well as computer-related topics. He worked in the IT sector as a Usability Engineer, involved in the User Interface of software applications. Address your queries & suggestions to: htmlking1995@gmail.com