October/November 2005

Volume 46, Number 2

Message from the Editor

Changing jobs can be just as painful as moving if you haven't been keeping your email organized. I was recently reminded of this fact, so I decided to trace the evolution of my email address, as well as try to come up with a way to prevent the same thing from happening again.

My very first email address came with my first AOL dial-up connection. I still pay $5 a month to keep the address active, along with my AOL dial-up account, which serves as my emergency dial-up Internet connection. Recent events have made me wonder if an AOL email address is worth even that much (read on).

Email History

My first step in organizing the email aspect of my life was to try to calculate exactly how many email addresses I've had over the years. Two student email accounts, four from past jobs, my secondary AOL identity, and at least one Excite or Yahoo account that I've lost track of. That's eight that are no longer in use, and I currently have five that I do use. Thirteen email addresses in a little over 10 years—that's slightly more than the number of physical addresses I've had in my entire life.

My current addresses include the previously mentioned AOL account, work, personal (it came with my DSL account, but since I'll soon be switching Internet providers, it's basically defunct), personal business, and what I proudly refer to as my spam account. I created a spam email address several years ago before spam-blockers were popular, and when I noticed that every company I did business with asked for (and sometimes required) an email address. Even though I may be interested in the latest special offers from Lands' End or Gardeners' Supply Catalog, I want to view them when I choose and don't want them filling up email server space. I also find it a nuisance to have to delete all these emails, so I created a dummy Yahoo! account, and access it occasionally when I want to see if I can find something on sale that I need.

Recent Dilemma

I'd been at my last job for a little over three years, and had lost track of how much I was using it for things that weren't exactly related to my job. It had become the email address all STC communications were forwarded to, including my newsletter alias and the three STC list serves I belong to. There were other list serves that I had joined, and I subscribed to A Word a Day and other email newsletters and services like a daily traffic alert that were sending information to my work email.

I was surprised to find that some of these services only offered an unsubscribe option when I moved, not giving me any way to simply change my email address. I also realized that if I had not had ample opportunity to export my address book, forward important mail to another address, etc., I would have lost a lot of important information. I had other problems saving messages like not being able to open a .pst file at home even though I was connected to the VPN, and losing all the messages I forwarded to my AOL address because the AOL email system didn't recognize the format they were sent in.

Resolutions

After reflecting on the problems I've had changing email address, I've come up with the following game plan to avoid the problem again in the future:

1. I've decided to no longer use my work email for anything remotely personal. I really don't want the IT people reading my emails anyway, and I won't have to worry about saving important messages the next time I change jobs.
2. For similar reasons, I don't want to use the account that comes with my Internet service as my permanent email address, because I may change Internet providers.
3. I keep putting off purchasing my own domain name, finding the time to design a real personal Website, etc., but this may be the best solution, or maybe:
4. Another possible option is to take advantage of all the free email services that are available, particularly a popular one like Yahoo!, which I can login to anywhere and possibly forward to another address so that I don't have to check email in several different places.

Those are my thoughts at present. I'm going to have to experiment more to see if I can come up with an even better solution. If any of you have better email management suggestions, please email them to me at: news@stcrmc.org and I'll be happy to publish them in the next issue of Technicalities.