How I manage my email
I have a pretty good setup for my email. This is how I do it.
1. I have an account with Dreamhost.com that allows me to host my domain, reighley.net This allows me to create email boxes and email forwarding addresses. Dreamhost offers accounts for under 10 dollars per month for people with average needs. I have been using them for 5 years now, and have always been quite impressed with their reliability, ease of use, and honesty.
2. I set up an 30 dollar per year account at Spamcop.net.
3. I set up an super secret email address at reighley.net.
4. I set up email aliases on my dreamhost account and i.e. josh@reighley.net direct them to forward to my spamcop account. I also set up all of my email software to use the email alias as the outgoing email address. This makes sure that all replies go to the public address instead of my super secret one.
5. I direct spamcop to filter my email, and forward the good stuff to my super secret reighley.net account. Spamcop fiters my email for Viruses as well as for known spammers.
I set up my email client to use IMAP instead of Pop3. The advantage of this is that my email remains available to me from every computer I choose to view it from. If I read a message and file it from my home computer later I can be at work and open the folder using my webmail client to review the message. People like me who run a small business should have access to all of their communications from any location. The disadvantage to using IMAP is that It uses quite a bit of space on the server. Luckily, Dreamhost is pretty genorous with space.
So, When you email me at josh@reighley.net, your message gets forwarded to my spamcop account. Spamcop looks at it, makes sure that you are not sending me a known virus or a known viagra advertizement. If the email is kosher, then it forwards it to the email account that I actually use. Works pretty good!
