e-mail

"It's a new world" out there in terms of digital identity and security, Microsoft said Monday. And, this world is far more dangerous than it used to be.

In order to mitigate e-mail infiltration by hackers and wrongdoers, Microsoft has announced that it's tossing linked accounts for its Outlook.com service and instead will be using aliases.

"There are a number of people who have more than one email address and want to manage these multiple email addresses from Outlook.com," Microsoft account group program manager Eric Doerr wrote in a blog post Monday. &… Read more

Your Google account is responsible for giving you access to more than just your e-mail nowadays. Your Google account provides you with access to a wide range of Google services, including Google Music, Google Drive, and Google+. It also allows you to log in and set up devices, like Android smartphones, tablets, and Chromebooks.

To help you keep an eye on your Google account, Google tracks your recent account activity and allows you to review them from your Google Dashboard. It's similar to the Gmail "Last account activity," but includes more than just your Gmail activities. To … Read more

Last December Google announced its plans to discontinue support for Google Sync as of January 30, 2013. Sync allowed users to access Gmail, Google Contacts and Calendar using Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync system. What this allowed iOS users to do was set up Gmail as an Exchange account, which in turn provides push alerts for new e-mails in a real-time sync of Calendars and Contacts.

The cutoff date has long passed, but if you had an account already set up and running on your iOS device as Exchange, you had nothing to worry about; Google promised to keep the service … Read more

I'm a Gmail fanboy. Priority inbox, stars, the archive tool, labels, filters, built-in translation, conversation view, relatively effective spam blocking -- its features have helped me stay one step ahead of the chaos.

But on Friday, when the new Gmail app arrived on my Android phone, I lost some of my faith because of one simple thing: Google deleted the delete button.

In its place was a button that, I eventually figured out after some confused experimentation, toggles messages as read or unread. Deleting a selected e-mail became a two-tap operation: tap the menu button, then tap the delete … Read more

On the eve of President Barack Obama's high-level meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. intelligence officials have revealed that a slew of documents and e-mails were stolen during the 2008 presidential campaign from both the president and then GOP presidential candidate John McCain. Officials are accusing China's government for the hack.

According to NBC News, officials said that they first detected the major cyberattack in the summer of 2008 and were then able to trace the culprits back to China.

"Based on everything I know, this was a case of political cyberespionage by the Chinese … Read more

The new Gmail has undergone a huge refresh. The Web version now has a tabbed inbox to support categories and the mobile apps have an updated interface as well. If you've updated to the new Android app, you may have noticed that there's no longer a trash button in the toolbar when viewing a message. The new toolbar only has buttons for archive, mark, and move. If you flip the screen orientation to landscape, you'll also see an additional button for labels.

If you prefer to delete certain messages, rather than archiving everything, you can still use … Read more

During Google I/O Google announced some improvements to its Google Now service. One of those improvements -- as we have already covered -- was the ability to create reminders within the app. One other feature we haven't discussed yet is the ability to send a text message or e-mail using Google Now.

Similar to the way Siri works, you're able to give a voice command to Google Now and have a message composed, complete with the recipient of your choosing (so long as they are in your contacts). After Now has filled in all of the required … Read more

Google released Hangouts last week as a standalone app for iOS, Android, and the desktop via a Chrome extension. In addition to the apps, you can also use Hangouts from within Gmail, just like the old Google Talk.

To enable Hangouts in Gmail, click on your profile photo from the Google Talk chat list, then select Try the new Hangouts. Hangouts will immediately replace Talk, then walk you through a very brief introduction to Hangouts.

Keep in mind that it may not have rolled out to you yet, so if you don't have the Hangouts option in your Gmail … Read more

Microsoft recently announced that Outlook.com had 400 million active accounts. In the announcement, they also revealed a welcome new feature for users who send e-mails from other accounts in Outlook.com. In the past, e-mails sent from Outlook.com would say, "on behalf of," so there was no way to hide the originating Outlook.com account. Now you can send e-mails from other accounts that look exactly as if they were sent from the originating e-mail service provider (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Comcast, etc.). Here's how to set it up:

Step 1: Go to Settings > More … Read more