Colchester City Council

Email is an excellent way to communicate with companies and organisations about special offers or the latest news. But it is also used by others, known as ‘Spammers’, as a way to deliver unwanted, annoying and malicious communications that can cause harm to yourself and your devices.

Your email account will also recognise some messages are not from legitimate sources and place these in your ‘Junk’ or ‘Spam’ folder, they don’t always get it right so you should check this often to ensure that no important emails have been stored here and also delete emails from here, the ‘Junk’/’Spam’ folder does delete itself after 30 days.

This includes what is known as ‘Spam’ or ‘Junk’ messages:

Advertising from online pharmacies, pornography, dating sites, gambling sites etc
Opportunities to get rich quick or to work from home opportunities
Fake/Hoax virus warnings
Fake/Hoax charity appeals
Chain messages which encourage you to forward them to all your contacts, usually with a message of bringing good luck

Your email address can be obtained by spammers in many ways including:

Using automated software to generate addresses
Encouraging individuals to click through or enter their details on Fake/Hoax/Fraudulent websites, sometimes these sites pose as spam email cancellation services.
Hacking into legitimate websites to gather users’ details
Buying email lists from other Spammers
From names/addresses in the CC line, or in the body of messages which have been forwarded on multiple times and not had the addresses removed

By responding to any spam messages confirms to the spammers that your email address exists and can also lead to identity theft.

Identity theft occurs when someone gains access to your personal information and pretends to be you online, view the video further down this page about Online Identity.

It is important that you set your email up correctly and use it safely.

An email allows you to send messages and keep in contact with friends, family and others. These others could be organisations or business you trade with in some way.

There are many email providers including your broadband providers, do some research and find the one that suits you. But please note that if you use your providers account, if you switch providers you may lose your email account as it is affiliated to that specific provider and account.

Most processes are the same in order to create a new email account, you need to:

Go to the relevant website of the provider in which you wish to join and select 'create new account/register'.

Create a memorable email address that you can use when applying for jobs or registering for social networks.

The most common email addresses include your name, this can be just one of them your first name, middle name or surname or it could be both for example firstname.lastname@domain.com.

The different websites will require you to create a password.

There are a number of rules regarding passwords that will make them more secure:

Length - You need to choose a password that’s long enough. It is recommended passwords that are a minimum of 8 to 12 characters in length. A longer password would be even better.
Uppercase and lowercase letters – It is recommended to use a mixture of both.
Numbers – It is recommended to include numbers in your passwords. For example, you could use a 1 instead of the letter I.
Special characters – These make your password even more secure. For example, you could use @ instead of the letter a, 4 instead of A or $ instead of the letter S or s.
You should avoid using personal information such as birthdays, favorite sports teams or children/pet names as these will be easier for someone else to guess.

Check how secure your password is on the how secure is my password website which allows you to test how secure your password is by typing it in and seeing how long it would take a computer to guess your password.

If you would like more help with your email account, you can visit their help and support pages on their websites. Below are links to some email providers websites. If your email provider is not on this list then please go to your preferred search browser and type the name of the provider followed by the word ‘help’, this should populate the relevant page for you to be able to continue.

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Email accounts