Photo owned by dusk-photography (cc)
Many couples getting in touch with me are clearly using a specially created email account for all their wedding correspondence. Unfortunately many are using Hotmail accounts. Practically all Hotmail accounts I’ve ever gotten emails from have been hacked.
So my advice if you’re setting up a special email account for your wedding planning is:
- Don’t use Hotmail. Hotmail seems to be the easiest web based service to hack, and is very indiscriminate with what it considers junk.
- Do use Gmail. My experience suggests Gmail is a much more secure than other free webmail services.
- Do check your junkmail. Even the cleverest webmail service makes mistakes, and your supplier’s reply might have gone in with all your Nigerian lottery winnings!
- Use a strong password. Do not use pet’s names, favourite colours, dates of birth etc. Passwords should be a random string of letters and numbers, and longer than 6 characters for maximum security.
- Use Bcc. If you’re contacting multiple suppliers in the same email use the Bcc: field rather than the To: field. This way if you do get hacked there isn’t a ready-made email list for the hackers to use.
It’s worth paying attention to this right at the start. It’s much easier than having to tell your friends and contacts that you are not actually in the business of selling cheap electronics from China!