Bournemouth — May 19th 2015

A rather select group of just eleven members gathered to hear Mick Burrell talk about Mail on the Mac. Mick's stated intention was to tell us about a few features of Mail which we may not have thought of exploiting but, by popular request, he prefaced this by a quick revision on the differences between POP and IMAP mail accounts, and the various ways of trying to control the amount of spam we receive. Whilst we are all familiar with the junk mail filter in Mac Mail itself, the absence of any such facility in iOS8 Mail means that it is really worthwhile getting to grips with the filtering offered by your mail provider.

Mick then went on to cover his planned topics, including how to choose POP or IMAP when setting up a non-standard mail account and the use of rules to sort messages automatically on arrival. Mail unfortunately doesn't apply rules to sent messages so, if you want both sent and received messages to be automatically sorted, a third party add-on is needed. Mick uses Mail Act On from Indev Software.

Smart messages and Signatures were also covered followed by some tips on troubleshooting e-mail problems. It seemed that most people present had experienced the 'please check your username and password' message at some time or another, a message which shouldn't be taken too literally since the actual problem almost always lies elsewhere.

Mick closed by talking about the risks posed by phishing e-mails which have become much harder to spot over recent years. He punted out that we, the users, are generally the weakest link and that Mac OS can't protect us against ourselves. The only real way to be safe is never to click on links in e-mails, instead type the company's internet address directly into Safari.

After fielding a few questions, Mick was thanked for a very informative and useful talk. After a refreshment break, a more general Q&A session was held, almost all the queries raised this time being security-related. A sure sign that Mick's talk had made us think about such things!

TJH

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