Email Tip of the Day: Check Your Spam Box

Unless, of course, you do not care about ALL your legitimate email...

Gmail does you a great service by routing spam you receive into its own box. You will never see it or be bothered by it. And after 30 days, Gmail deletes it “forever” for you.

Gmail does you a great disservice by treating some of your legitimate email as spam. You know what that means — you will never see it and after 30 days, it’s gone “forever.”

Oh, you think you’re free of this problem since you don’t use Gmail? Think again. No matter what email system you use, you better find out what’s happening with your spam or junk email! Read it all

Verizon Ate My 6000 Subscribers!

Actually, YahooGroups (allegedly) deleted 6800+ "Thoughts for the Week" subscribers.

And now I need your help. But first, more of the “tragic” story. 🙄

On Friday (9 April 2021, for history’s sake) I posted to my Thoughts for the Week email list: Read it all

How to Set Up Thunderbird to Retrieve Old Email

How to get email from an expiring email address

Ever since I set up God’s Post as an email provider, it has been powered by the folks at Everyone.net. That arrangement ends in a few days. When it does, all email accounts and their content will be deleted (say the folks at Everyone.net).

Until then, GodsPost users should be able to retrieve any email in their Inboxes. In this post I will tell you how to do that using the Thunderbird email client.

You should be able to apply these basic concepts in whatever desktop client or webmail service you use.

Server Settings

I’m putting these first for the immediate convenience of those who don’t need instructions on how to use them. 🙂

Incoming server (POP3)
- server name: pop.everyone.net
- server port: 110
- username: the unique part of your godspost email address
- password: godspost account password
Outgoing server (SMTP)
- server name: smtp.everyone.net
- server port: 587

Since you will not be sending email through GodsPost, you shouldn’t need to do the SMTP stuff, but there you have it just in case your system requires it for security reasons.

You also need to instruct your email client to not leave the messages on the server.

New Account

You enter the above settings in Thunderbird’s Account Settings dialog. To open it, click the “hamburger” button to the left of the search field. Click Options on the drop-down menu. Then click Account Settings to open the dialog.

Beneath the white pane on the left side of the dialog is the Account Actions button. Click it, then click Add Mail Account on its drop-down menu.

Provide your name, GodsPost email address, and GodsPost password. Be sure to have it remember the password for you! Click Continue.

Thunderbird will try to finish the process automatically for you…and will fail. Click the Manual config button in the lower left corner of the dialog.

The incoming server is set to IMAP by default, so change it to POP3. Now enter the server and port information. Click the Done button when you are…well…done. If it is grayed out and unclickable, be sure incoming authentication is set to Normal password.

Thunderbird will verify with the server(s) that it’s all done correctly. If it is, you will land back at the Account Settings dialog. Click Server Settings in the white pane and be sure Leave messages on server is not selected. Click OK.

Add Special Mailboxes

You need at least these three new mailboxes:

In–current
In–godspost
Out–godspost

If would also be good to have mailboxes for each of the extra mailboxes you have in your GodsPost account.

To create a mailbox in Thunderbird…

Right-click on your GodsPost email address at the top of the left side of your window.
Click New Folder on the resulting context menu.
Click Create Folder.

Retrieve GodsPost Email

Before starting the process of getting your GodsPost email from the servers at Everyone.net, move the email in your Thunderbird Inbox over to this one you just created: In–current. (This is only a provisional move.) Also, if you have filters that route your incoming email, I suggest you disable those. (I’m sorry not to tell you how right now. I’ll try to add that information in another day or two.)

Retrieve the email in your GodsPost Inbox by clicking the down arrow on the Get Messages button at the left end of the Thunderbird toolbar and clicking your GodsPost address. If all goes well, all that email will be removed from that server and brought into Thunderbird on your computer.

Move that email from the Thunderbird Inbox over to the second special mailbox/folder you created: In–godspost. Wonderful!

What about the email in your other GodsPost mailboxes? Alas, Thunderbird will retrieve only what is in the Inbox. However, this handy work-around works just fine:

While logged into your GodsPost account in your web browser, move email from the Sent mailbox into the freshly emptied Inbox.
Go back to Thunderbird and Get Messages from the GodsPost address again.
Transfer those emails from the Thunderbird Inbox to the third special mailbox/folder you created above: Sent–godspost.

Repeat the basics of that three-step process for email in any other GodsPost mailboxes you have.

Restore Your Original Thunderbird Inbox

After you retrieve all the GodsPost email you want and have transferred it from the Thunderbird Inbox to the special mailboxes/folders you created, it’s time to do one more thing.

Move the email you put provisionally in that special In–current mailbox/foder. Put it back in your Inbox and delete In–current (after you verify that it’s truly empty and its content is back in Inbox).

One Last Thing

If you find a mistake in my instructions, please let me know so I can fix it. I tried to be as accurate as possible, but you know how we humans are… 🙂

How to Earn $901.65 a Month. On the Side.

At least. Easily. Eventually. Maybe even effortlessly, kinda.

Short answer: “Persuade 500 people to pay you $2 a month for an essential service.”

Longer answer: “Be a good seller who can help people see the advantages of using an @godspost.com email address for a mere $25 a year. But before that, you would need to buy the service, site, and domain from me. And you would also need to pay out $84 a month for the service to power the service. ”

So…why am I not earning at least $561.09 a month via this great service? I am not a good seller nor a good persuader. So I haven’t been able to get even 10 people paying $25 a year for this service.

And I probably won’t persuade you to buy the service, site, and domain from me. (But I’ve been wrong before.)

Of course, you could forget the whole pursuit of filthy lucre and “unseemly capitalist profit” and offer the service for free. (But I really can’t offer it to you on that basis.)

Baring Your Heart, Soul, Mind, Life — via Gmail

Will your old content make you vulnerable in the future?

If you’re not a Gmail user, move along.

Wait, wait — I need to amend that. If you’re not a Gmail user and if you don’t send email to Gmail addresses, you can just move along.

That’s not true either. Here’s the best amendment so far: If you don’t use the Web, you can ignore this post.

I begin with this “reassuring” statement:

The system operates automatically and nobody working for Google is able to see any of the images being examined.

Do people still believe such assurances? 🙄 And even if it were true today, tomorrow’s line may be, “That was then; this is now.” Read it all

Email in Distraction-Free Environment

Using a big-free email service is a gateway-to-the-Web experience with all kinds of distractions and bloat. Enter God's Post for a distraction-free environment.

Using Gmail or Hotmail or YahooMail or AOL is a gateway-to-the-Web experience with all kinds of distractions.

And bloat. Wow! Talk about bloat! 😯 If you use Gmail, you know it isn’t merely about email. You know how you’ve blown so much time “checking my email”! 🙁 Sure, it can be fun and entertaining and helpful and efficient.

But often you want to do your email
in a distraction-free environment.

For over a decade I offered free, web-based email at God’s Post. Read it all