Hacked email

If you're in my email contacts, you no doubt woke up this morning to a poorly worded email from me. If you know me, you know it's clearly not from me. Yup, for the first time in my life, my email got hacked. So, rather than sending a mass email to everyone who has received an email from me in the past five years, I thought it would be easier to post on here that I'm aware of what happened, I hope I fixed it, and I'm sorry.

This is especially ironic, seeing as nearly two weeks ago I officially gave up Facebook (not for Lent, for life!). You'd think without a Facebook account I would be more secure than the average internet user, but apparently not.

In memory of my beloved email account, please take this opportunity to change your email password. Bad people suck.

Tips 19 and 20: E-mail coupons

Today's technology organizational tip does double duty because in my mind you can't have one without the other.


Tip 19: Maintain two personal e-mail accounts.


Tip 20: Use your second personal e-mail account for all coupon and shopping-related e-mails.

I still use my maiden-name e-mail account for all my store coupons and newsletters. Do I do this because of my fear/hatred of spam? No, once again Gmail saves the day with its outstanding spam filter, and I never get spam in my inbox. Instead, I keep two e-mail accounts to save money and resist temptation.

Matt's favorite joke to tell every time he's reading the Sunday paper is, "Hey Steph, guess what? Macy's is having a sale!" (Punchline: Macy's is always having a sale.) You know who else is always having a sale? Ann Taylor Loft and J.Crew and everyone else on the planet who e-mails me coupons and sale notifications. Then, because I am weak, I think to myself, "Well, I can justify this purchase because it's on sale." I know I am not alone here

I rarely check my secondary e-mail account. I use it as a place to turn to when I'm looking for a coupon or a sale. It's much better than the opposite -- waiting for a sale to find me.

Of course, if I know I'm in the market for a particular item and I'm scoping out a particular favorite store, I might temporarily sign up for e-mails to be sent straight to my primary address. I do this mostly for convenience so I don't have to spend needless time checking my other e-mail address. But once I make the sought-after purchase, I remove my primary e-mail from the mailing list.

I know this takes strength of will, but keep in mind that even when something is on sale, the best way to save money is by never spending in the first place.

Reader question: Online coupon organization

Sam raises a great question in response to my coupon filing post, and it seems particularly timely as we are in the midst of technology week: "What is your system for handling online coupons that you would use online (rather than print and use in store)? Do you use Gmail labels or some other system?"

Actually, I do not have a dedicated system for sorting online coupons. I like Sam's recommendation of Gmail labels. If you use Gmail and haven't gotten into Gmail labels, I highly recommend them. When I am planning a big trip (like the cross country 2008 trip) or an event (like a friend's shower) I make a Gmail label for that topic and sort all related e-mails accordingly.

But, I digress. I don't have a system for organizing online coupons because, quite honestly, most of my purchases are made in stores, unless I am making a purchase on Amazon (still, after all these years, a great one-stop shop). So, what I usually do is archive the e-mail with the coupon in Gmail, and then search for the e-mail if I wind up needing it later on. How did we all manage our e-mail before we could sort it and search it?

(And no, I do not work for Google, though this week it certainly sounds like it! Full disclosure: my brother used to work for Google, but that has little bearing on any of our lives now.)

What about you all? Do you have a system you can recommend?