Tag: multiple email addresses

Article

There are times where use of public accounts isn’t appropriate

The murky world of politicians’ covert social media accounts (sbs.com.au)

My Comments

Just lately there have questions raised about how Australian politicians and their staff members were operating multiple online personas to disparage opponents, push political ideologies or “blow their own trumpet”.

It is being raised in connection with legislative reforms that the Australian Federal Government are working on to place the onus of responsibility regarding online defamation on whoever is posting the defamatory material in a comments trail on an online service. This is different to the status quo of having whoever is setting up or managing an online presence like a Website or Facebook Page being liable for defamation.

Here, it is in the context of what is to be expected for proper political communication including any “government-to-citizen” messaging. This is to make sure we can maintain trust in our government and that all political messaging is accurate and authentic in the day and age of fake news and disinformation.

I see this also being extended to business communication, including media/marketing/PR and non-profit advocacy organisations who have a high public profile. Here, it is to assure that any messaging by these entities is authentic so that people can build trust in them.

An example of a public-facing online persona – the Facebook page of Dan Andrews, the current Premier of Victoria

What I refer to as an “online persona” are email, instant-messaging and other communications-service accounts; Web pages and blogs; and presences on various part of the Social Web that are maintained by a person or organisation. It is feasible for a person or organisation to maintain a multiplicity of online personas like multiple email accounts or social-media pages that are used to keep public and private messaging separate, whether that’s at the business or personal level.

The normal practice for public figures at least is to create a public online persona and one or two private online personas such as an intra-office persona for colleagues and a personal one for family and friends. This is a safety measure to keep public-facing communications separate from business and personal communications.

Organisations may simply create particular online personas for certain offices with these being managed by particular staff members. In this case, they do this so that communications with a particular office stay the same even as office-holders change. As well, there is the idea of keeping “business-private” material separate from public-facing material.

In this case, the online personas reference the same entity by name at least. This is to assure some form of transparency about who is operating that persona. Other issues that come in to play here include which computing devices are being used to drive particular online personas.

This is more so for workplaces and businesses that own computing and communications hardware and have staff communicate on those company-owned devices for official business. But staff members use devices they bought themselves to operate non-official online personas. This is although more entities are moving towards “BYOD” practices where staff members use their own devices for official work use and there are systems in place to assure secure confidential work from staffer-owned devices.

But there is concern about some Australian politicians creating multiple public-facing personas in order to push various ideologies. Here, these personas are operated in an opaque manner in order to create multiple discrete persons. This technique, when used to appear as though many vouch for a belief or ideology, is referred to under terms like sockpuppetry or astroturfing.

This issue is being raised in the context of government-citizen communication in the online era. But it can also be related to individuals, businesses, trade unions or other organisations who are using opaque means to convey a sense of “popular support” for the same or similar messages.

What I see as being appropriate with establishing multiple online personas is that there is some form of transparency about which person or organisation is managing the different online personas. That includes where there are multiple “child” online personas like Websites operated by a “parent” online persona like an organisation. This practice comes in to being where online personas like email addresses and microsites (small Websites with specific domain names) are created for a particular campaign but aren’t torn down after that campaign.

As well, it includes what online personas are used for what kind of communications. This includes what is written on that “blue-ticked” social-media page or the online addresses that are written on business cards or literature you had out to the public.

Such public-communications mandates will also be required under election-oversight or fair-trading legislation so people know who is behind the messaging and these are important if it is issues-based rather than candidate-based. If an individual is pushing a particular message under their own name, they will have to state whether an entity is paying or encouraging them to advance the message.

This is due to most of us becoming conscious of online messaging from questionable sources. It is thanks to the popular concern about fake news and disinformation and its impact on elections since 2016 thanks to the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s presidential victory in the USA. It is also due to the rise of the online influencer culture where brands end up using big-time and small-time celebrities and influencers to push their products, services and messages online.

Multiple email accounts may be beneficial to your privacy and work-life balance.

Some of us may find it convenient to handle all of our email through one account. The advantages that are often seen include dealing with one inbox and sending from one account.

But we are increasingly entering a world where we have to deal with multiple email accounts.

Why run multiple email accounts?

One reason this is becoming important is to keep business and private email separate. Here, it may be about preserving a separate business and social persona, or simply to delineate your time between home and work activity. Similarly, the separate email address for business / work email is an advantage in preserving a professional appearance.

As well, the correspondence associated with your personal email address that you maintain yourself isn’t subject to the same kind of legal scrutiny that the correspondence associated with your business email address would be subject to. This is important if your workplace or business is to change hands or is a party to legal action of any sort.

People who have a public-facing business life such as politicians or celebrities will maintain a public-facing email address to maintain an email correspondence consistent with that public-facing role. This is becoming more important where people in the public eye are becoming more vulnerable to “dirt-digging” – the practice of trawling for any information to discredit one’s reputation.

This practice is also becoming important with the emails we “tie” with various social-network presences. Here, we may want to operate a professional-looking persona on the public-facing social-media profiles while keeping a private persona that you have on your personal social-media profiles.

The situation extends to where we have our email address on material that the public have easy access to, whether it’s that notice on the church noticeboard or our entry on that petition.

Those of us who engage in online dating are having to find that maintaining a separate email address for use with dating apps and Websites gives us greater control over what potential suitors know about us. It may also offer a chance to control when they can contact us while keeping this life private from family or work.

Account types list in the Add Account option including option to add POP3 or IMAP4 accounts

It also applies to businesses and organisations who maintain a public-facing email address that is written on the public-facing material. This keeps a professional appearance and keeps your staff’s business and private email more private. Similarly, you can maintain multiple email address for particular job descriptions or workflow requirements.

Conversely, some of us maintain a separate email address that we give to marketers or online email newsletters as a crude method of spam control. Similarly, separate email addresses are being seen as important as a failover measure should one email server crash or as a security verification means for email services.

How is this achieved?

Who will provide the email inboxes

Add Account option in email settings on Android (Samsung) email app

Your workplace will give you an email address that is tied to your tenure with that employer. The provision of a tied email address will also apply for most college students or staff who have access to college IT resources. If you run a small business or other organisation with a Web presence and own domain name, your Webhost or domain name provider will offer at least one email inbox under the main domain name you purchased.

Most ISPs or telcos will provide you with at least one email inbox as part of your Internet-service deal. It will be something that is very common with fixed-line Internet service especially from major providers.

Of course, there are the Webmail providers like Outlook.com and Gmail who will provide you at least one email address for free. It also includes the secure email hosts who provide a secure user experience at a premium price.

Now we are seeing the rise of dedicated service providers who provide email inboxes as their main business. Such providers will offer Web-based or standard client-based access to these mailboxes.

What to look for

Account types offered by the Samsung Android email app

A feature I consider very important for email accounts is that they support multiple-device access and full “on-the-road” use. Typically it would mean use of a major Webmail host or a host that implements “hosted Exchange” or IMAP4 email protocols. This is important where we use a mobile device or secondary laptop computer to work our emails and want to work our email from anywhere.

You may find that a Webmail interface that allows the operation of multiple accounts from competing services may come in handy if you are using shared computers or public computing facilities.

How do you handle the multiple email inboxes

Different users may manage their email from multiple accounts using one of two paths. One is to use a single interface for all of the email accounts, with the other being to use different interfaces for different accounts.

It may include having all your personal email accounts operated with one interface like a Webmail interface while your work or business email accounts are operated with another interface like a business-optimised email client.

One email interface for all accounts

Most email interfaces, whether Web-based or client-based, will support the operation of multiple email accounts. In this case, using the one interface will underscore the idea of going to one email interface for all of your email activity.

Your email interface will have an option in its account-management settings to add or delete email accounts. Most of the current interfaces will have a “quick-setup” routine for the popular Webmail providers; and will have a setup option for accounts using Microsoft Exchange, POP3 or IMAP4 accounts.

Receiving email

The user experience for reading your email will have separate inboxes for each of the accounts you manage. You may also find that some of the email interfaces like the GMail Web interface may offer a combined-inbox view for all of your email accounts with better interfaces using visual clues to differentiate each account.

Sending email

Should you send an email, you will be asked to choose which account you use to send your email via.

On some email interfaces where you choose the account you are operating at the moment like Windows 10’s Mail app, the account you are operating would be the one you send your email via. Other interfaces may require you to determine which account you send the email from when you click the “Send” button. As well, most of these interfaces may offer a default-account setting for new email, with the option to override this when you compose your new message.

The default behaviour for replying and forwarding would be to use the email service you received the email via for sending the replies or forwarding the email.

Your contacts list

Of course the contact list kept in your email interface will, in most cases, be shared amongst all of the accounts you operate.

Different email interfaces for different accounts

On the other hand, some of us may choose to operate each inbox with its own interface setup. This may be due to an email client not handling multiple inboxes how we want it or simply to delineate the operation of each inbox as a separate task.

This is a simple task with operating each interface with its own account. You will have to copy across contact details you want to use across multiple accounts if you operate them with separate interfaces.

A combination of this situation and the former situation will apply if you choose to operate some accounts with one interface and others with another interface. This is a useful practice for those of us who want that “church and state” separation between business and personal or public and private email activity.

Conclusion

Operating multiple email accounts may come in to play as a measure to protect your privacy and manage our email inbox properly.