♫”My baby, she wrote me a letter.”♫ Sing it.
You’ve got mail! Always a good feeling.
But. But – imagine all of the points of concern along the way that happen when you mail a letter to your grandmother.
✉You write it. You may put enough postage on it, maybe not. Depends on number of pages you include – lots of kid and cat pictures, maybe.
✉You drop it in a mailbox (or the mail carrier picks it up from your mailbox – the little red flag thing)
✉It goes to an aggregation place
✉Magical post officey things make it appear in the post office where it belongs. I hear it’s because of a ZIP code, but true mail machinations are beyond me.
✉Someone in the source post office sorts the mail – change of address stuff happening, too.
✉Mail carrier picks up sorted mail and delivers.
Most of the time this works, and your mail arrives undamaged by sorting machines and hands and to the right person. It’s a federal crime to tamper with mail – very serious. Still human error in the mix; we get our neighbors’ mail.
We’ve come to expect email, though, will be instant, real, and un-tampered with.
Remember spoofing? Faking a sender email address, whether or not the domain involved was real.
I have the story of sending my mother email from god@heaven.com. Not difficult 20 years ago. A simple prank with no harm intended or received.
Mail handling and verification has improved – MX records – all sorts of things for another post. Encrypted mail.
But if someone gains your credentials to your email account, that person BECOMES you. Can email your grandmother as the big bad wolf that looks like you. Maybe writes with your ton.
Some thoughts for email users of all levels:
⛔Be wary of fraudsters – in all you do in interaction with strangers. Your email account is valuable. Careful of what you click on those emails you receive.
⛔Strong credentials on your email account – very strong password.
⛔Put and maintain multifactor authentication on your email account. 💥Do not skip this step.💥
⛔Do not use your email account to log into other services.
Email safely. Read it cautiously.
Write to your grandmother. On paper.
