Email Account Settings

I'm over inbox zero. I've achieved it a few times but the emails quickly pile up again. Here are the rules I actually follow when it comes to my inbox: 1. The 15-second rule. If an email takes less than 15 seconds to reply to, reply immediately. Don't overthink it. Don't mark it unread. Most people think "I'll come back to it," but that's going to end up taking you over 15 seconds by the time you re-open the email next time, think of your reply, and hit send. Just do it the first time around. 2. The 3 Emails System. Stop using one email for everything. I have 3 key email addresses: my normal work email, my spam email, and my finances email. Work email: This is for people I want to be able to reach me. All business is done using this email. Spam email: any newsletters I subscribe to. Anytime I make a purchase online. If Sephora offers me a free birthday gift in exchange for my email. Finances email: all banks, credit cards, retirement accounts, etc. Any important finance stuff that I definitely do not want to miss. This email address only gets shared with financial institutions. 3. The Block Generously rule. I have zero tolerance for spammers and cold emails. If I did not consent to you emailing me, I don't want an email from you. With automation tools, most cold emailers will continue to email you. You receive the initial email, then the "Hey, did you see my previous email?" and then 3-5 more after that. It's better to just block them immediately. On Gmail, just click the three dots, go to the dropdown and click "block". Saves you a lot of time. I'm always looking to add new rules that'll save me time - so let me know your best in the comments!

It amazes me how few people know about + addressing for emails and how useful they are. 🙈 What is + addressing? 🤔 Basically, you can add a + after the username part of your email address and then write any unique word you want afterwards and this will still be a valid email address you can receive on. 🤯 For example if your email address is joe.bloggs@company.com, you can also use joe.bloggs+LinkedIn@company.com as an email address. If anyone were to send an email to this address you would still receive it and you'll see the full email in the To: field. Why is this useful? 💡 1️⃣ If you're going to an Expo where you have to put in your email address so that everyone can scan your badge and spam you for months on end afterwards, you could use joe.bloggs+ExpoName@company.com. This way you'll still receive your registration information and you can keep the email working for a couple of weeks after the event so you get emails from people you want to hear from, then set up a rule to junk all future emails to that address. 2️⃣ Let's say you need to sign up for something that requires a unique email address but you've already used your work one. Create another just by adding a +word. 3️⃣ Additional security method. I've spoken a lot over the years about having unique passwords for every website you sign up to. This is because if a hacker steals your email address and password and you use the same password for multiple applications, you're at a big risk of being breached on other accounts. So if you also have unique usernames: joe.bloggs+Amazon joe.bloggs+PayPal etc Then it makes it even harder for hackers to break into your accounts. Plus, if an account email address is compromised and leaked, you'll know exactly where it was leaked from. This is also useful to work out whether companies are selling your data. Are you already using + addressing in your life and do you have other examples of how you're using them? Did you even know this was a thing? Let me know in the comments 👇🏻 #ithintsandtips #email #security #spam

Did you know you can use the + sign to create email subaddresses? Most email providers ignore everything between the + and the @. So yourname+anything@gmail.com still lands in yourname@gmail.com, but the tag sticks around in the "To" field. Two ways I've been using it: 1) Tracking who leaks my data Sign up with +netflix, +linkedin, +sketchynewsletter. When spam or phishing shows up, the subaddress gives you a clue about who sold or got breached. 2) Testing signup flows as a developer Need to register 20 test accounts but only have one inbox? +test1, +test2, +test3 all route to you. No burner accounts needed. The confirmation emails land in one inbox. I've found it super helpful!

🔍 561,321 events in 3 days. That's how many abusive signups and logins we flagged using a list anyone can use for free. A few weeks ago we open-sourced our disposable email domains list on GitHub. Since then we've kept updating it daily and started tracking matches across Castle's production traffic. Here's what the data looks like over the last 72 hours: The split is roughly 50/50 between registration and login events. Half the volume is fake account creation, throwaway accounts spun up to exploit free tiers, abuse referral programs, or seed fraud rings. The other half is logins on accounts that were already created with disposable emails, coming back to extract value. The geographic spread is wide. US, India, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore. No single country dominates. This is a global problem. The domains themselves are short-lived. marineso.com, nriza.com, noyavip.com. Names that didn't exist a week ago and won't exist next month. They're used both by bots at scale and by humans doing manual fraud, people who know that a fresh domain won't appear on most blocklists yet. The ISP breakdown tells its own story. Top of the list: Jio and Airtel (India's largest mobile carriers), Cloudflare Warp (VPN), Amazon Cloud, Huawei Cloud. A mix of residential mobile, VPNs, and cloud infra. The list is free, updated daily, and MIT-licensed: https://lnkd.in/eCyT4dxn It won't catch everything. But it's a solid first layer of defense for any signup or login flow.

I was part of a training this week that kept me a bit occupied. During the training, I had to give a presentation and needed to sign in to an application I never wanted to use, just to access a particular feature. Because signing in with email is often the most convenient option, I chose to go that route. However, I was hesitant about using my main email, so I used one I had randomly created a while back. “It’s just my email”… But is it really just that? An email address feels harmless. However, we use it to sign up for all sorts of things like newsletters, online shopping, our favorite apps...the list is endless. Just recently, I wanted to download event pictures from a photographer’s website, but I still had to provide my email address to access them. While all of this may seem harmless, the truth is that your email is often the key to your digital life. Most of your online accounts like banking, shopping, social media, are connected to that one email. Even when you forget your password, the reset link is sent there. Attackers know this. That’s why your email is often their first target. If someone gains access to your inbox, they can reset your passwords, access sensitive conversations, use it to send phishing attacks to your contacts, and even steal your identity. So no, it’s not just an email. It’s a master key. Here’s how to protect it: 📍 Use strong, unique passwords for your email account. 📍 Turn on 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication). This is non-negotiable. 📍 Consider having a “throwaway” email for signups, and keep a primary one for important use only. In cybersecurity, it's often the small things we overlook that become the biggest threats. How many email accounts do you currently use, and do you separate personal from public? P:S - I haven't made a post in a while and I just thought to share something today. Happy August everyone.✨

We talk with over 80 companies each month, interested in doing or currently doing outbound. The most typical issue I see is deliverability, and if your email doesn’t land in the prospect’s inbox, nothing else you do matters. Here are the 3 most typical mistakes I see: 1. Sending cold emails from your main domain - if you do this eventually, your regular client emails will start going to spam, and once that happens, it's difficult to recover your domain's reputation. 2. Using your CRM for cold outreach - your CRM is designed for people who already know you and want to hear from you. It's not built for mass cold outreach, and using it this way can hurt your deliverability across the board. 3. Treating deliverability as an afterthought - too many companies hand this off to a junior sales rep with instructions to "figure it out." This isn't 2010 anymore. You can't just buy a list, write a quick email, and expect results. Here's what I recommend you do instead: 1. Buy 15 domains and 30 email accounts for every 5,000 contacts you plan to reach (2 emails per domain). 2. Stick to .com domains only - other extensions can hurt your deliverability. 3. Use PlusVibe for email warmup and sending to build your sender reputation gradually. 4. Get dedicated residential IPs for your email sending tool - shared IPs can get you banned if other users abuse them. 5. Spread your sends over 6-8 hours minimum - no email blasts. 6. Keep 15 email accounts active and 15 in reserve for each 5k prospects you plan to reach each month - swap them out when any account drops below 95% warmup score. 7. Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly - use Mail-Tester to verify your setup. 8. Send emails under a real person's name (can be the same person across accounts). 9. Ramp up sending slowly over 3-4 weeks - start with 10-15 emails per day per account. 10. Cap each email account at 30-40 emails per day maximum. 11. Use paid Google and Outlook accounts - favor Google accounts. 12. Don't track open rates or click-through rates - they're vanity metrics, and many email providers now automatically open emails anyway. 13. No links or images in initial emails - add one link maximum in follow-ups if absolutely necessary. This includes email signatures. 14. Write in plain text only - zero HTML formatting. 15. Avoid spam trigger words - use MailMeteor and Folderol spam checkers to clean your copy. 16. Verify all email addresses - use Bouncer for regular emails and BounceBan for catch-alls. 17. Keep bounce rates under 3-5% (ideally under 2%). 18. Maintain reply rates above 1-2% (ideally 3-5%) - low engagement can hurt deliverability. 19. Randomize your content with syntax variations - PlusVibe and other tools can help automate this process.

Email addresses aren’t just a contact. They’re actually potential gateways, too. Your email address opens a door to your digital life. Once you share it, you’re opening up a door - not just to communication, but to unwanted attention, clutter, phishing - or even worse. Your email address is that crucial, so treat it with the security it deserves: ✍ Use a unique email address for each service you sign up for. Add the name of the website or company to it. This way, if leaked, you are aware and can address it. ✍ Make those addresses random, long, unguessable. Every company has a info@ email address. Guess what email address receives a lot of spam? ✍ Rotate them, and invalidate any that get misused.  ✍ Keep a personal email address that you only share with family and friends. Consider using email aliasing services. They’re often free, quick to set up, and allow you to create personalized addresses on the fly. This way, you can track who’s respecting your privacy, and who isn’t. As always, stay secure my friends! #EmailAliasing #Passwords #CyberSecurity