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February, 2009:

Gmail’s Multiple Inboxes

Recently, Google, through Gmail Labs, introduced the newest Gmail feature that promises to add efficiency to those who often open their Gmail account. This new feature is the Multiple Inboxes. At first, you may think that the feature will allow you to view various accounts in one window. The Multiple Inboxes, however, allows only the making and viewing of various panels in one Gmail account. You can just view these panels in the same window and at the same time.

Advantages of Gmail Multiple Inboxes

This new feature of Gmail has actually many advantages. For one, you can now create separate panels for your different email lists and view these multiple panels in one window. This Multiple Inboxes could greatly add efficiency if you want to filter and monitor your messages. The Multiple Inboxes  feature is also advantageous if you are receiving a lot of emails, because this could help you organize your messages. Through the Multiple Inboxes, you can now have a separate panel for the messages on your professional domain and another for the messages on your personal domain.

Drawbacks of Gmail Multiple Inboxes

Without a doubt, the new feature of Gmail has a lot of advantages. This feature also has a lot of drawbacks though. For one, this could be make your window look cluttered, especially if you create many panels. Another thing is, the multiple pane could only be useful if your monitor is wide and that the resolution is high. Otherwise, you would not see the content of the panels clearly.

Fresh and Juicy Phishing Bait: Economic Stimulus Package Payments

Cyber criminals are again on their way to find their next victims through phishing scams. This time, they are using the government’s economic stimulus plan to lure their victims. Recently, there are circulating emails promising people economic-stimulus package payments. But of course, this is just a bait. The scammers want to phish for important information from people, probably to commit more crimes. The scammers provide a link to a certain website that requires one’s personal information.

Actions against phishing

Alerted with this new scam, the US-CERT encourages people to report once they have received this phishing email. The US-CERT also provides instructions on how to put a stop to the spreading of this cyber crime. Number one on the list of US-CERT instruction is to avoid following the web links from unsolicited emails. Another is to learn how to identify phishing emails. The US-CERT provides detailed information on how to recognize and avoid phishing scams. The agency also gives guidelines on how to report cyber crimes.

Why people take the phishing bait

Phishing email is said to be one of the rampant and one of the most dangerous scams. Although Internet users are well aware that phishing scams are not at all uncommon online, there are still quite a large number of people who fall for phishing scams. One reason is that it is easy for scammers to harvest the email addresses of their victims. The scammers are also adept in making believably authentic websites. Aside from these, the economic crisis today makes various people vulnerable to the phishing bait that scammers set.

Another Cyber Attack from Hamas?

Another threat from Hamas

Recently, some Israelis were alerted because of the spreading emails threatening an attack to Palestine. The emails state that 1,330 Islamist fighters infiltrated Palestine and would kill prominent people. The email account was registered in Google’s Gmail, which enables one to open an account without identification. The people who received the messages received another one later. The next emails came from the man who calls himself “Youth of Islam” and the emails contain the title “The End of Israel.” The messages were written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. According to reports, the sender probably used the automatic translation services because of the grammatical errors in the messages.

The puzzle

What’s more surprising is that those who received the emails claimed that their email addresses are not the ones they are using for commercial and other purposes that would make these addresses accessible to external sources. One recipient of the controversial emails said that his email address rarely receives spam. The email was sent on behalf of al-Qassam, the armed branch of the Hamas; the sender does not actually have an identification. Until now, it’s still a puzzle if the emails were really sent by al-Qassam.

Different hacking methods

But how could the email addresses of various people be accessed by the sender, when they claimed that their addresses were secured from external sources? There are actually various ways to hack this info. Some of the ways include the use of JavaScript to make the browser send an message to a specific email address with the address configured into the browser. Another is by making the browser fetch the images in the page through an anonymous FTP connection.

What’s the Future of Email?

With all the advanced means of communications such as Short Messaging Services or SMS and Instant Messaging or IM, email seems outdated to some. There are actually lots of students who think email has already outlived its time. There are Internet users who view email as a less efficient means of communications compared with SMS and IM because it is not as fast as the other two. Some say that email is vulnerable to spyware, virus, and malware infections, which could pose serious threats to the system.

Special features of email

Despite the current trend in online messaging, you cannot deny the fact that email has important features that make it one of the most important tools for communications in either professional or personal domain. These features are usually not available in other means of data transfer. For instance,  emails can enable you to send large files by sending them as attachments to your message. Email also continues to develop in order to cope with the fast-paced development in Internet technology. Now, there are emails embedded with video and audio file. Among the popular examples of these are e-cards.

The future of email

Because emails have special features that are not found in other means of communications, emails would still be among the most valued online messaging tools in the future. The capacity of email to handle large files, for instance, is necessary in email marketing and other financial-related transactions. The popularity of emails for those who have businesses give assurance that email will continue to be among the the top in the list of data transfer tools in the future.

What’s the Big Deal with the BlackBerry?

The recent issue regarding Obama’s stand to keep his BlackBerry PDA-phone despite the NSA or National Security Agency’s stand that he should use the NSA’s favored Sectera Edge raises some questions from curious individuals. What’s with Sectera Edge? Why does NSA favor this over theBlackberry?

General Dynamics’ Sectera Edge is certified by the NSA for Top Secret emails, websites, and communications. Sectera Edge uses secure protocol to encrypt all communications, thereby, making sure that hackers and other cyber criminals will not succeed in accessing the information from the phone. BlackBerry, on the other hand, does not meet the security standard required by the NSA. For one, BlackBerry can easily be infected by malware and virus that can make the PDA-phone accessible to hackers. Emails can also be intercepted in BlackBerry. Aside from this, the latter has built-in GPS that would make it easy to pinpoint the location of the user.

Because of the very advanced technology that hackers and cyber criminals used to spread crime online, it is understandable that the National Security Agency would not easily give up its stand just to give in to Obama’s whim. Actually, former US presidents such as Clinton and Bush gave up their email during their time in office.

The final decision

The National Security Agency has now made its decision, and that it is allowing President Obama to use BlackBerry to communicate with some high-ranking officials and friends. However, he will be using the Sectera Edge in activities relating to the affair of the state.