This process involves completing two separate steps to access your inbox. It should be on the longer end don’t use something with only one word and a few numbers, like “password123.” Instead, consider choosing a meaningful phrase like song lyrics or an abbreviation using the first letter of each word in a sentence.Īnother way to secure your address is to set up two-factor authentication if your provider allows it.
This means it should be a password you don’t use on any other sites, and it should be somewhat complicated - something other people can’t guess about you, like your birthdate, name or other personal information. One of the easiest yet most effective things you can do to secure your account is to use a unique and strong password. Photo Courtesy: gradyreese/E+/Getty Images You can sign into your inbox by visiting your webmail provider’s homepage and looking for the fields where you enter your username and password. After accepting the site’s terms and conditions and its privacy policy, your new account will be ready.
After this, you’ll select a password.ĭepending on the client you choose you might also need to enter your phone number for verification purposes. If possible, try to make it something easy to remember and pronounce - think about how it sounds spoken aloud for those times when you tell someone your address. It should be a username that you’d be comfortable sharing with your boss, not a pun or something trendy you might find embarrassing later. It’s important here to choose something that’s evergreen, such as your name, if you’re planning for this to be the main or only address you use. You’ll also choose the username you want, which is the portion of your address that appears before the or extension. On this next page, you’ll add some personal information like your name, birthdate and location.
Stick with free webmail so you can always keep the same address. If you need to move to a new area or you decide to switch to a different ISP, you’ll lose all your old messages and contacts, which can be a major hassle if you have a lot of information sitting in your inbox. The email interfaces ISPs use tend to be more complicated to navigate than webmail, and they often don’t give you much storage space for your messages.
While it may seem convenient to opt for this, GCFGlobal recommends sticking with a free webmail provider instead of your ISP. Your local internet service provider (ISP) may also have its own email client you can use as long as you pay for the company’s services. Take some time to review how each client works, what it looks like, whether it offers benefits such as cloud storage and how user-friendly it feels to you. Gmail, on the other hand, has a cleaner look and more organizational tools, and because so many people use it, it may be easier for you to chat with friends and family using this client. If you’re more familiar with Microsoft’s operating system and appearance, you may prefer Outlook, particularly because it’s also available in the company’s Office Suite, which you might use for work. Although for the most part email clients serve the same general purpose - letting you send and receive digital mail - each provider’s website, interface and features are slightly different. The first big decision you’ll make when creating a new email account is selecting a provider. Photo Courtesy: Gareth Fuller/PA Images/Getty Images
There are quite a few different webmail clients out there, with some of the most popular and best-known including Gmail, Outlook/Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. This is convenient because you can sign into your account and check your emails from just about any internet-connected device.
Most people send emails today using webmail, which is any email service you can access from an internet browser - as opposed to downloading special email software onto your computer and having to run that program in order to get into your inbox.