Gmail Tricks – Avoid Getting Your Account Hacked

Stories about hacking into one’s account are not uncommon and it can happen to anyone. It can happen to you! You hear these kinds of news all the time about people and even high status figures having their account hacked. So, let’s see a short list of tips that will help anyone keep their Gmail account safe.

Securing your passcode 

Never have the same passcode for all of your accounts. This is the first and most common mistake! Make sure you opt for a password that is exclusive. Make it personal and try to remember it. If you think you might forget it, use the password manager tools to have it at hand. But even with all of this, hackers might still be successful. But you should know about this app called LogDog that identifies if someone else logged into you account from a different location. If you are notified of this suspicious activity, you must change your password as soon as possible.

Never open unknown emails!

This is a golden rule which most of you probably know. But it never hurts to say it again! Sometimes you might receive all kinds of adds or job offers in your inbox that might seem tempting. These emails are pretty sketchy, so if you have a bad feeling about them, trust your intuition. There are lots of talented hackers out there and they can write pretty legit emails.

Include a two-factor confirmation

When someone hacks into your Gmail account, they usually know your password and your username. So you should set-up a two factor confirmation procedure. Of course this is not bulletproof, but you can also download a spyware on your PC, which will send you all kinds of notifications if anything suspicious occurs. This is a pretty good strategy in order to secure your email.

Perform a verification of your email settings

Hackers can also change the settings of your account, so that any type of email you receive is directly sent to their inbox. This will allow them to find all kinds of bank info and other personal and private documents. You can avoid this by verifying your email forwarding settings. Also check to see if the auto-responder hasn’t been modified.

Check for malware

You computer must be updated constantly and must have an anti-virus as well. Ignoring this aspect, will make you a sure target for hackers. They could “plant” all kinds of codes that will allow them full access to your email. So, before logging into your back account, for example, you must make sure your computer is risk free.

-   ordoh

How to Transfer Contacts from iPhone to GMail

It doesn't matter that how many Apple devices you own, you will still be dependent on one Google Account because of loads of Open-Source services offered by Google, such as their Google Maps, Gmail or Google Chrome. Hence it is equally important to maintain and update your Google Account from time to time. We have many of the users shifting from iOS or Apple iPhone or iPads to Android smartphone or tablets and the most common problem faced by them is to transfer their contacts from their old Apple to their current Gmail contacts.

If you have been using Gmail as your primary e-mail account then it must have been mandatory for you to keep updating your e-mail contacts with the contacts available on your iPhone. Luckily, this is not a problem anymore and we are going to explain your why. Just follow the series of steps mentioned below.

How to Transfer Contacts from iPhone to GMail:

Step-1 :

Make sure that your contacts are getting synced with your iCloud account.

Step-2 :

Now visit your iCloud website and reach out for the Contacts section. You will see that all the contacts on your iPhone are mentioned there.

Step-3 :

Select the contacts which you want to export, by pressing ‘crtl’ and then click the contacts one by one (if you want to select all then press ‘Crtl+A’ on your keyboard). One the Contacts are selected, export (or download) the VCF file of all those contacts by clicking the highlighted option mentioned below.

Step-4 :

Now you will just have to upload that VCF file under the Contacts section of your Gmail account. Once the file is uploaded, Gmail will filter out all the duplicate contacts and will ask you whether to merge them or not.

That’s it!! The contacts are now uploaded and will become the part of your Google Account and by any chance if happen to have any Android device with you, then they automatically download on that device also.

-   gizmostorm

Gmail App for Android – How to Organize your Inbox?

Since its inception, Gmail has become the ultimate email service provider.

Given that all of your emails are now directed to Gmail, it is pretty obvious that your inbox might be very crowded. There are thousands of messages that pour in and all of them are looking for your attention.

In such cases, it is very difficult to determine which of these mails is the most essential one and requires immediate attention. If you have had this problem before, you have come to the right place since by the end of this article, you should become acquainted with tips and tricks you could use in order to organize your Gmail inbox and thus make it easier to manage.

Optimize your inbox

If you are looking to effectively navigate through your Gmail inbox, you can make use of the keyboard controls. Even though it might take some time before you become a master of these shortcuts, you will save a lot of time once you know them, especially when reading mails and organizing your inbox.

Some of these keyboard shortcuts are enabled by default, however, in order to use a full set of these commands, you must enable the shortcuts. To do this, go to the app’s Settings>General>Keyboard Shortcuts” and then click on the bullet beside it. Make sure you save these changes in settings in order to apply them.

Choose how your inbox looks

Gmail app offers users at least five options that they can use to sort their inbox. These options can be accessed via the application’s Settings and then from there choose the “Inbox” tab. Go on and select the “Inbox type” option from where you can set your Inbox to include Primary, Promotions, Social, Updates and Forums categories.

While it is possible to customize the above tabs by turning them on and off, it is not possible to create personalized tabs in Gmail. However, the good thing is that with the available tabs, you’ll be able to get your messages in an organized manner, where the important ones appear in the Primary tab, networking emails appear in the Social tab while promotional emails appear in the Promotions tab.

In these tabs, you can choose to view starred mails first or unread mails first. You can also opt for the priority inbox.

Personal level indicators

Emails come with yellow markers and small arrows within them. When you see such a single arrow, it means that the message is meant for a group of people. However, double arrows mean that the message has been sent to you alone. In case there is no arrow at all, this mail is from a mailing list. Indicators of personal levels can be turned on and off from the General Settings.

Mute group chats

If you are in a group that no longer interests you, you can easily mute it using the Gmail app and still have the conversation in your inbox. To do this, navigate to the conversation and open it. Follow it by clicking on the icon labeled “More” and then click on “Mute.”

Get all mails together in Gmail app

The Gmail app offers users with separate or multiple email address with the ability to access and use their mails at once. This means that you don’t have to be logged out of another account in order to check the inbox of another account. You can add up to five email accounts, and these may include non-Gmail addresses and in this way, you can get all your emails in one place.

-   PAU

How to see if your emails are being tracked

You might not realize it, but there are now email-tracking tools that make it easy for people to see when you open an email, what you click, and where you're located. 

"Emails appear no different to your contacts, but you get data when, where, and how a contact interacts with your message," says a cheery video advertising Bananatag, an email-tracking service for Gmail designed for job seekers, advertisers, and those working in public relations. 

In response, a handy new tool called Ugly Email shows you when your emails in Gmail are being tracked, and it starts working before you click anything.

When Ugly Email is installed, a tiny little eye symbol appears next to any email in an inbox that is being tracked by tools like Bananatag, Streak, or Yesware. 

Installing Ugly Email is easy. First you'll need to make sure you're using Google Chrome as your web browser. 

Next click this link to take you to Ugly Email on the Chrome Web Store, click the "Add to Chrome" button, and you're all set. 

Any email arriving in your Gmail inbox will then be vetted for tracking tools, and the Ugly Email team promises that it is "actively working on adding more" email-tracking services to its list. 

Ugly Email just showed up on Product Hunt, so if you're looking for a similar email-alert service that has been around for a while longer, you can always try out PixelBlock, which does the same thing.

-  TOI

Access Gmail While Staying Offline

We all travel from time to time and if we take a plane we must put our smartphones into airplane mode. When we take the train and go though tunnels, we lose signal and the internet connection interrupts and we can’t read our emails. For this problem, there’s a simple solution: an email program that allows you to read your emails, compose messages and send them once the connection is back. You will need to up POP or IMAP access, then turn off your internet connection and Gmail offline will take care of the rest.

If you’re using Google Chrome, go to the chrome.google.com and look for Gmail offline, then add it to your browser. If your browser is Safari, go to mail.google.com/mail/mu/?mui=ca and set mail.google.com to store data on your computer when you will ask it, then select Allow offline mail under Allow offline mail, and click on Continue.

Accessing Gmail Offline with Google Gears

You can install the Google Gears add-on, which is available for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox in Windows, Safari, Mozilla Firefox and OmniWeb in Mac OS X 10.5 and Mozilla Firefox in Linux. Open Gmail and go to Settings>Offline tab and enable Offline Mail for this computer, under Offline Mail, then click on Save Changes>Next and you’ll see an authentication dialog. https://mail.google.com should appear because the site’s address is in the authentication dialog. Click on I trust this site and make sure to check Allow it to use Gears. If you’ll click on OK, you’ll have a link to Gmail on your desktop, but it’s recommendable to click Cancel / Never allow this shortcut. Gmail will finish the initial synchronization, then you’ll click on the big X to close the offline status pane. This won’t stop Gmail from downloading emails in the background. To check the synchronization status, you’ll hover the mouse over the offline Gmail icon, which you’ll see in the status bar.

How much data do you want to keep offline?

By default, Gmail might synchronize all mails you’ve sent and received in the past year, plus personalized mailing labels you’ve used for a greater flexibility. However, you can choose manually how recent should be your mails and which labels Gmail offline should keep on your computer by going to Settings > Offline tab and selecting how far in time you want your emails to be available under Recent message range. This can be done under the Download options. You can select a different timeframe for labeled emails (all or individual labels) by going to Change Label Settings and you’ll specify the maximum file size for attachments, then you’ll click on Save Changes and that’s it.

If you’re sharing your computer with a family member or a friend, make sure to delete Gmail’s cached data.

-  TFJ

Gmail Free App for the iPhone – If Search is of Utmost Essence – Gmail is a Great Option

The free Gmail app can be downloaded as a standalone app on your phone, making it cleaner and sleeker than before.

It now offers support for more than one account on your iPhone. Of course, users of iOS devices might prefer to use the Mail as their primary app for emailing, but Gmail is unbeatable for its search features.

Clean Design

The Gmail app comes with a very simple design, with a menu that is collapsible andavailable on the left. Users can toggle it open and you can find folders, like Important, Starred and also Send and Drafts and so on along with any other customized folders that you have created. You will find Trash, Labels and All Mail on the bottom, whereas a button on the top allows you to switch between your Gmail accounts.

All the Basic Tools

All the main features that you must have seen in the browser-based version are present in the app as well. You can track important mail and messages in the priority inbox, organize your mail with starred messages and labels or archive them in the usual manner. As you type out an address, the app autocompletes the ‘contact them’. You can also manage several accounts and search with predictive text for inbox search.

Sorting of Mail

The app sorts your inbox with tabs for Primary, for Social and for Promotions as well as Forums and Updates. Important emails from family, friends and other regular contacts get stored in THE Primary tab. Social networking messages appear in the Social tabs and the latest sales pitches that you have singed up for, such as online shopping sites will appear in the Promotions tab, along with bills, receipts and so on. If you are a part of a forum, the threads will appear in the Forums tab. All this makes it very easy to search your mail for what is important and leaves the rest for some time later. You can also specify the notification functionalities, with no notifications, or on an account basis, or only for those marked important and so on.

Vacation Response

The Settings offers a unique and significant feature that mobile users will find very useful, namely the controls for sending automated emails for vacation response. If you have forgotten to click on the ‘out of office message’ and left on a vacation, do not worry! You can use this option for setting one.

Color Coding of Threads

You also have the Chats feature, but it is not an active service, but rather a folder where chat dialogs can be viewed, with unread mail appearing in bold and the rest in light gray. There is also a color coding used for different persons in a thread of conversation, with the one initiating the mail appearing in green, with the next in purple and the next in red and so on. The text of messages appears in any color that you opt for, with blue appearing for hyperlinks.

Search Features

The Gmail app in iPhones offers excellent search features, and can search the Mailbox thoroughly. However, the app will wait till all the letters have been typed and you hit on Search and then it starts hunting for the ‘search-terms’ in the mail.

Verdict

The Gmail app does a great job of helping you access your messages, even if you don’t have your PC or laptop with you. The app is smooth and quick and offers support for several Gmail accounts as well. Email browsing becomes very easy and launching of any other application, such as Google Drive, or Google Plus also becomes very easy from within Gmail.

-  TFJ

5 Interesting Gmail Features That Maybe you Don’t Know

Just about everyone owns a Gmail (read Google) account these days. While the use of Gmail to regularly send and receive emails varies widely from one user to the next, it pays to know how best you can customize your experience nonetheless. The following features serve to illustrate just how amazing your experience on Gmail can be if you explore what lies beneath the surface…

1. The Dots do Not Matter

If your Gmail address is my.name@gmail.com, that sounds great and all that but did you know the dots do not matter? I mean, it does no matter where you place the dots. In fact, someone could send you an email using m.yn.am.e@gmail.com or some other variation with the dots placed anywhere liberally in the text string and you will still receive your email as usual. On a side note, it also does not matter if you use @gmail.com or @googlemail.com.

2. Undo Emails Sent by Accident

Have you ever replied to an email and then realized a few seconds later that you used the “Reply to All” option while your reply was meant for just a single recipient instead of the whole company? Gmail now allows you to undo a sent email but you have to manually enable the option. Click the “Tools” icon on the right hand side of your Gmail window (the tools icon looks like a gear wheel).

From the drop-down menu select “Settings” and look out for the “Labs”. In the Labs tab, scroll down till you get to “Undo Send”. Click the “Enable” option and then save changes. Still in the “Settings” dialog, click the “General” tab and scroll down and you will find another “Undo Send” option. Enable it there as well and then save the changes. This done, you are now set to undo the damage when you hit the “Send” button too soon. Every time you send an email from your Gmail account a notification bar will appear for a few seconds prompting you to either cancel the send command or dismiss the prompt.

3. Insert an Image Directly into your Email

Again, this feature is found in the “Labs” tab under “Settings”. Scroll down until you get to “Inserting Images” and enable the option. Now inserting images into the body of your email is as easy as in Word. You can drag the image directly from your computer onto the email while in “Compose” mode. Alternatively, you can click the “Insert Image” icon and then use a URL to locate the image you want in the email.

4. Create a Custom “From” 

If you use Gmail as your default email account alongside using Gmail’s functionality to manage several other emails, you may extend this functionality further. Gmail does not just enable you to read emails from different accounts from one place, you can also reply or forward these emails while maintaining your separate online identities. Creating a custom “From” field to ensure you reply and forward your emails without mixing up your different online identities is easy. Just use the Labs feature and follow the prompts.

5. Send Canned Responses to Repetitive Emails

If you regularly receive emails which require a standard reply, you do not need to keep typing the reply every time you have to make a response. From the “Labs” feature, you can set up a canned response to help you get rid of such replying tasks with speed. Enable the “Canned Responses” from the “Labs” tab of the “Settings” dialog box. To create a canned response, use the compose option as usual and type the message. Just below the “To” textbox, click “Canned Responses”, go to “Save” and click “New Canned Response”. Give the canned reply a title and give it a title. Next time you have to give a canned response, all you need is to click “Canned Responses”, choose the appropriate message and then send you reply.

As will be apparent from above, there are many ways to make Gmail work the way you like it to. The five tips above represent just a sample of the amazing tricks you can customize your Gmail experience. Master them and dealing with email does not have to be the dreary repertoire it has been over the years.

-   TFJ

Gmail Chats Now Available Directly From your Inbox

If you are that kind of a Gmail user, who likes chatting and talking to other people, even in the most restricted conditions, like in an office, then this article is just what you need.

If this is your type, then think of this scenario: you are presented with a platform you can use to keep talking to your friends, even if the environment is very strict; just like an office is. Wouldn’t this be some form of newly discovered heaven for you? Of course it would and this is because you won’t have any needs of frequently checking your phone and typing messages to respond to your friends and risk being noticed by your boss or those not so friendly workmates, who might pass on such information to higher ranking officials of the company.

Chatting with Convenience

Thanks to Gmail, you can now chat without necessarily having to look away from your desktop. Google Talk is an instant messenger from Google that was recently replaced by Google Hangouts. However, the application is still available for use and while it is, you have to ensure to make the most of it. As much as you may want to update to the latest version of Google Hangouts that offers users with an array of new features that include voice and video calling, if you are looking to keep your chats at a hush-hush level while working, it is better to skip the update and instead stick with using Gmail Chat.

Gmail Chat Requires no Software

One good thing about using Gmail Chats is that it requires no software to be installed, before using. However, you can choose to install the Google Talk Messenger which is an independent application that can also be used for chatting purposes once installed on your PC. This would however be completely unnecessary, since you can get this same service right from your inbox.

The advantage of using this feature from your inbox is that no suspicions would be raised as you won’t have to type or look away from your PC. You’ll appear to be typing an email, yet you are chatting with your friend. In addition, all conversations made in chats are free of any charge.

Gmail Chat Prerequisites

In order to use this feature, the first thing you need to have is a Gmail account. This is of course if you are new to Gmail. Once your account is active, on the left hand side of your screen, you should be able to see that you are automatically signed in to Gmail chat. In addition, you can see a list of persons in your contacts and when you select on any of them, a window will pop up from where you can start chatting one on one with your friend.

Setting Status Messages in Gmail Chats

Just like with WhatsApp, you can set a status message for your friends to see as well as see your friends’ status too. It is possible to set a custom status and to do this, look on the left of your window and from there; you can access a drop down menu that has various options for status messages, including “Available”, “Busy”, “Invisible”, as well as “Custom messages”. You can choose any of the default options and set as your status message or choose to create a custom message to fit your direct needs. Choosing the invisible option will make you appear as if you are not logged in while using the “Busy” option will ensure that you receive minimal disturbances when online. The “Available” status will let your friends know that you are available for chat.

All of these status messages have a representation. A green dot means that one is online and available for chat while a red dot means one is busy. When an orange dot appears, it means a user is not at their desk or away from the screen. When you choose to hide your status and go invisible, the dot that comes out is colored in grey. In this way, your friends will know that you are offline.

You can also make voice and video calls using Gmail.

-   thefusejoplin