Gmail Archives - NuTech Services LLC

Jan, 2018

Tip of the Week: Filters and Labels Help Organize Your Gmail Inbox

Gmail is an excellent tool for business use, even more than many business owners may realize. Did you know that it even has the capability to keep itself organized? For today’s tip, we’ll go over how to use filters and labels to keep your Gmail inbox organized and easy to use.

An Intro to Labels and Filters
Labels and filters are just a few ways that Gmail can help to keep your messages organized. You can assign rules that are applied to messages as they come in. These rules make a filter, which analyze your incoming messages and ensure that these messages are sent to the right label. These labels allow you to view messages more conveniently, consolidating those that have certain factors in common.

For example, you could create a filter that assigns a particular label to any message that has “Quarterly Reports” in the subject line. That label can then be used to access any and all messages with “Quarterly Reports” in a single, consolidated list.

Creating a Filter
Creating a filter in Gmail is fairly simple.

Once in Gmail, click the down arrow in the search bar at the top. This allows you access to greater detail in your search criteria.
Fill in the details that you want your filter to pay attention to, whether it is who the email has come from, or if the subject line contains a particular word or phrase.
Once your criteria have been established in this window, click in the bottom-right corner of the window, where it says, Create filter with this search.
You will be given a list of options, including the option for the message to be automatically ‘starred,’ or marked as important. For our purposes, we are concerned with the option to Apply the label.
Next to the ‘Apply the label’ option, there is a drop-down menu labelled Choose label. You have the option to create a new label from here, or select from those you have already made.
Once your filter has been properly configured, click the Create Filter button.

Creating a Label
While creating your filter gives you the opportunity to create a label, there are sometimes that you may want to have a label prepared that you can add messages to manually, or to already have one to direct a filter towards. Fortunately, creating a label and adding it to a received message is also fairly simple.

In Gmail, click the More option on the left of the screen.
From there, click Create new label.
Name your label and click Create.

To add this label to a message:

Open the appropriate message.
At the top, click the Label button. You can also add a label to a group of messages by selecting them before you click the Label button.
Select each label to be added. You can also create a new label from this point as well by typing in a new name.

Now you’re ready to take even greater control of your Gmail inbox. For more handy IT tips and tricks, subscribe to the NuTech Services blog!

Jan, 2016

Tip of the Week: How to Access Multiple Gmail Accounts On Your Android Device

If you have an Android smartphone, you know that the device is closely tied to your own personal Google account. As such, in order to get the most out of your Android device, you should take advantage of its seamless functionality with Google applications. This includes making sure that your Gmail account is properly set up on your device. We’ll walk you through how to add additional Gmail accounts to Android’s Gmail app.

First off, why would you want to add a new Gmail account to your Android device in the first place? This could be helpful for a couple of reasons. For one, there are some folks out there who do, in fact, have multiple Gmail accounts. While it’s frowned upon by Google, they might make a free “burner” account in an attempt to limit the amount of junk mail they receive. Another reason could be to add a work account, if your business uses Gmail as its preferred email client. Doing so gives you anywhere access to your email, calendar, and Google Docs, especially while you’re on the road or traveling for business purposes.

Either way, it’s a good idea to know how to add a new account to your device. Here’s how it’s done.

Adding a New or Existing Gmail Account
First thing’s first; open the Gmail app. You’ll see your inbox, but what you really want to see is the side menu. Tap the hamburger menu (the three-line menu in the top-left corner), and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. Select Settings, and you’ll see a list of all your current accounts.

Next, tap on Add account. Select Google, and tap Next. Afterwards, it’s simply a matter of following the instructions on the screen.

Switching Between Accounts
Once you’ve finished adding your new account to the Gmail app, you can switch between your account inboxes easily enough. Simply open up the hamburger menu again, and you should see your accounts in the form of icons at the top of the menu. You can tap the icon, or you can select the down arrow next to your currently open account to select the one you want to use.

For more great tips and tricks for your Android smartphone, and technology in general, subscribe to NuTech Services’s blog.

Dec, 2015

Gmail Implements Warning System to Notify Users of Unencrypted Messages

An email could be just about anything, and you should always approach them with caution. What appears to be a harmless attachment could be a spam message in disguise, with malware or viruses attached. Keeping this kind of security in mind can be difficult for the average business, but if your organization uses Gmail, you’ll be warned of whether or not your received messages are sent over a secured connection.

In other words, Gmail will tell you if there’s a chance that your received messages were tampered with by hackers while in transit. By doing so, Google is hoping to emphasize the importance of improving online security to all users and service providers for webmail. Encryption is necessary in today’s security-minded online society, and Google wants to raise awareness of this important fact. While Gmail already takes advantage of an HTTPS encryption protocol for its own mail service, this is only a small step toward increasing the security of online email services. The HTTPS only encrypts the browser’s connection with the server, rather than all of the traffic to and from senders and receivers.

Basically, email providers need to be using encryption to shield messages while they’re in transit, or risk the possibility of hackers compromising the messages. Many email providers have already started taking advantage of encryption protocol, a trend known as STARTTLS, for their messaging systems, including Google, Comcast, Microsoft, Yahoo, and a few others.

As explained by ZDNet:

A lot of providers don’t support STARTTLS, meaning that any email encrypted by the sender can’t be read when it’s received on the other end. This so-called opportunistic encryption works when both email providers support STARTTLS. If one doesn’t, then the other provider falls back to an unencrypted form.

The most important thing that email providers should take away from this shift in encryption policy is the need to make their user-security a top priority, just like major players like Google and Microsoft do.

While this new encryption protocol by email providers can help you potentially avoid an unsecured email, you don’t want to rely on it to keep all of your important digital assets safe. What your organization needs is a comprehensive security solution that’s designed to maximize network security, without sacrificing ease of use. Even the most basic security solutions, like a firewall and antivirus solution, are effective at limiting a user’s exposure to online threats. Still, you want something with a bit more power, especially when it comes to guaranteeing the security of your business’s assets.

The solution that your business needs is a Unified Threat Management tool, that’s designed to augment common security practices with powerful, enterprise-level measures. A UTM uses a firewall and antivirus, but also provides preventative measures like content filtering and spam blocking. This helps your organization stay productive without sacrificing security. To find out how your business can reap the benefits of a UTM solution, contact NuTech Services at 810.230.9455.

Oct, 2015

How to Block and Unsubscribe from Users with Gmail’s New Features

We all know how annoying spam and unwanted emails can be when you’re trying to navigate your inbox. While a quality spam filter can go a long way toward eliminating these irritating time-wasters, Gmail now has a feature that lets you dodge some of this pain. With the ability to block selected users and unsubscribe from email campaigns, you can reclaim plenty of time that you might have been wasting weeding out your inbox.

Before we dig into the details, though, it should be mentioned that, while Gmail’s new feature is indeed a good first step towards eliminating spam in your inbox, it’s by no means a guarantee that you’ll see a significantly less amount of time-wasting messages. A comprehensive spam-blocking solution is often necessary to keep malicious emails and other time-wasting junk out of your inbox. Just because you block or unsubscribe from a particular email address doesn’t mean that emails won’t start pouring in from another source. If you have concerns over your current levels of spam and junk mail, feel free to contact NuTech Services at 810.230.9455.

Still, Gmail is taking strides to make it easier for the average consumer to take advantage of the benefits of email, without the negative side-effects, like spam. If you happen to be receiving an alarming number of messages from a specific person that you don’t want to hear from, or if something just looks plain sketchy, you can block anything further from the sender. Any blocked messages will immediately be sent straight to your spam folder. To block someone, all you have to do is open an email from the sender you want to block, click on the down-arrow next to the reply button, and select Block “user.”

Gmail’s unsubscribe feature works in a similar manner to the unsubscribe links that you might find in various advertisement emails, like ones you might get from Amazon or other big-box retailers. On the Android Gmail app (the most recent version – this feature isn’t on the desktop version of Gmail yet), open a message from the user you want to unsubscribe from. Click the three-dot More button next to Reply and select Unsubscribe.

While this doesn’t necessarily block spam completely, it’s a good step in the right direction. Your goal shouldn’t be to send all spam to the spam folder; in order to achieve maximum productivity and email security, you want to prevent spam altogether. For more tips on how to accomplish this feat, give NuTech Services a call at 810.230.9455. Also, be sure to subscribe to our blog, where we often post about the latest security developments, security how-tos, and much more. When it comes to securing your email from spam, and protecting your business from hackers, you need all of the help you can get.