Bulletproof Your Email in 3 Steps

Like all normal users even I had a single email account to handle all my email. It had a lot of drawbacks once your start receiving thousands of emails from hundreds of different sources, some of them I’m sure many of you have already faced:

• Paranoid about deleting an email - No Recovery Options
• Storage Constraints
• Organizing
• Privacy - Separate Work and Family
• Spam

If you answered yes to at least one of the above reasons, read on. The advent of Gmail, you might say solves some of them problem like storage. But not even Gmail is perfect. So what I suggest is a 3 tier system bulletproof system to alleviate your email woes.

1. Personal Account: Create a new Gmail account and give E-mail address to only your closest friends and relatives. Lets call this PA@gmail.com
2. Your Current E-mail Account: This is the E-mail account you already have. This is for regular use and for work. Lets call this MA@gmail.com
3. Archive Account: Create another new Gmail account. Use this only when dubious a website asks for your E-mail. No where else. Lets call this AA@gmail.com

Now the Setup:

• Log in to PA@gmail.com and go to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP. In Forwarding select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to" and fill in MA@gmail.com and keep the Gmail’s copy in the inbox.
• Now, Log in to MA@gmail.com and go to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP. In Forwarding select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to" and fill in AA@gmail.com and keep the Gmail’s copy in the inbox.

The Setup will now look like this:

After this setup you only need to login to your current email account to access all your email. If you accidentally delete an email in either your personal email or work email you always go to your archive email AA@gmail.com and retrieve that important message. There is a lot less spam since it is eliminated in three tiers.

If you are really finicky about organizing you can create filters in you current Gmail account and filter email into their respective labels/folders and color code them. The "Better Gmail Firefox extension" from Gina Trapani of LifeHacker.com provides the folder like functionality that you see to the left. That and lots of other cool features that make Gmail even better.

Please tell me what other types of email setups you use to manage your email.