I received a very interesting question from a reader named Jimmy in Texas. He writes:
“I’ve noticed over the years that having an email account isn’t the problem! The problem seems to be that we as holders/owners of an account need to have that trust within. Problems withs HOTMAIL, GMAIL, YAHOO having people hacking into our email accounts. Then we talk about passwords (123456, qazwsx) that aren’t secured. So give us the.real scoop on email and tell us what lies in the future with email and it we can expect there to be a cost for free email services in the future.”
Gee Jimmy, that’s a lot to think about. I can’t predict the future of e-mail, but I can tell you where I think things might be headed.
First of all security issues will continue to plague every form of electronic communication. Where there’s a way to steal money or con folks out of their hard-earned cash, crooks will follow. I think you’ll see a move away from having a password to what’s called two-factor authentication.
An example would be Yahoo’s plan where instead of a single password that you use each time you log in, they send a text with a temporary password. Outlook.com also offers a similar features for Microsoft Accounts where you need two pieces of information to sign in and they send a code to an alternate e-mail address or to an authenticator app on your smartphone.
Some smartphones give you the option to sign in with fingerprints, but look for more and more accounts to offer biometric options like facial recognition.
Also look for your e-mail provider to take more of a hand in pre-sorting your e-mail for you. The old days of e-mail just showing up in your inbox in the order it was sent are on the way out. This way of sending messages is what’s called a “dumb pipe.”
What mail providers want now is a “smart pipe.” The smart e-mail account will sort your mail by advertisements, social media, delivery notices and personal. Many of these accounts will also scan your mail for messages so they can show you what they feel is relevant information.
For example, Google’s Inbox looks for things like flight confirmations and then lets you know what the weather will be like that day and will even notify you if your spouse’s plane is expected to be late.
I wouldn’t look for providers to start charging for e-mail, but do look for them to mine your accounts for as much data as they can get their hands on in order to target advertisements and services to you. Perhaps, we will see paid tiers of service that protect your privacy offered by mail providers or alternative companies springing up that offer privacy for a price.
~ Cynthia
There all ready a way to stop hacking,scamming and other problems,it is called and it works very well,and I am surprised you havent mentioned this in your news letter.
Looks like you didn’t mention it either.
LOL!!
I would love to see extra p/w protection on email. I tried the two tier thing where they send a txt code to my cell. Okay, that works, but what a pain! If folks are too lazy to have a complex p/w, they’re not going to use the cell phone code things.
I don’t pretend to know how do it, but what about a cell text code that’s good for a month? Renew monthly? Okay, probably holes in that too, but gotta be something.
This sounds great the problem I see with this approach is one I deal with everyday no cell phone signal where I live. So to texting me a code to use would not work. There is no cell service for any carriers at all until you drive a mile from my home and that is not practical.
I hope they don’t go to the sending a text every time you want to login into your email. I don’t have a smart phone and I have to pay for every text I send or receive. if people would simply change their passwords once a month I think a lot of this stealing of email accounts would stop.
I can’t imagine my “mailman” reading my mail and deciding set what’s relevant to me.
I live in a house where I cannot get cell phone coverage – only landline.
What can we do about this situation?
I use MailWasher to presort email before it comes into outlook. I love it. It learns what is spam and marks it as email comes in. Then you wash and get only what you want coming to Outlook. Check it out.
Our mail should be up to us to decide what we want to read or delete. They should leave it alone. I neither have a second mail program or cell phone and have no plans getting either.
I’m happy with the “dumb pipe”. I can sort my own email by whatever perameters I wish to use.
I do NOT want them messing with my emails! I want to continue to receive them in the order they were sent to me.
I like my mail coming in by the date received. I can sort my own mail.I also want to decide on my own password and to keep it the same.
All this talk about e-mail I have not seen anything on the contacts, in Windows live mail you can not delete or edit contacts, it grayed out. It would be nice if someone would address the problem. Thanks
Doug, you should be able to edit contacts added to Live Mail. Contacts that are imported from other places, such as Facebook can’t be edited.
Cynthia, is the apostrophe key broken on your computer?
Not sure what you mean. There’s several apostrophes in the article, did I miss one?
I like my email just as it is and there should not be some program or person reading my email and deciding what I get and not get, let me do that myself. I do have another account and yahoo does at times send a conformation code to that email and that is fine with me but to a smartphone, I dont or never plan on having one, I have a free plan that works fine for my cell phone calls. I dont plan of paying for email service either being on a fixed income.
I like the idea of facial or fingerprint on my smartphone, but how would it workout on my computer? My computer does not have a camera on it and I just don’t want to have to buy one.
I can manage my email just fine the way it is…I have a delete button and it works very well. And as for the fingerprint recognition, I have it on my smartphone and it’s only worked about 7 times since I’ve had it, and I still have the same fingers I’ve always had, lol.
I love the features & functions that come with Mozilla Thunderbird. They are easy to use & allow you to clean up & dress up your emails. I also like that fact that my emails are downloaded onto my machine so I do not have to view the ads that come with my Time Warner Cable email service.
My bank already does this on an alternate laptop that I didn’t check-off (it’s a volunteer option). I can’t have it sent to my phone because I pay as you go and it costs a half minute per text and my alternate email is so cluttered that sometimes I don’t have the time allotted to use it before it’s cancelled (15 minutes)so it’s a real burden for me and I’m sure for anyone else in a similar situation. It’s a good idea it just doesn’t work for everybody.
I doubt email will ever go away. Introducing other points of entry (cell text messages) just makes things more complicated, not more secure. A better solution would be encrypted password entry that is machine specific (using SSL cert). The apparatus for this already exists. A two pass entry would be a one time option. One would have to update when a certificate is about to expire. This would prevent anyone from accessing an account from another machine whether they know the password or not. The backup for this (in the instance of hardware failure) would be a much more rigorous authentication.
As far as authentication without passwords goes, when more devices get 3D sense cameras, Windows Hello seems to have that covered. No need for second devices. Just the special camera.
As for automatic anything except automatic delivery of the raw stack of messages, I can work around this mess with a simple download to a desktop email client. then I get to decide on presentation, filtering and sorting. With no “suggested content” or anything like that.