I’m far from being a hysterical journalist who preaches that hackers will infiltrate your incredibly boring My Documents folder if you don’t install a Virus Buster and all manner of spyware and firewall applications. That said, identity theft, gaining access to online services and stealing your domain names and the like is easy if someone has your email password. If you can take only one step to protect yourself online, it should be to look after access to your email.

And there’s also the issue of backing up your email in the event of human error or a computer crash/glitch.

Here are six tips to quickly and easily get your email security and backup organised… without the hype or any expense. You’ll love the last two if you’ve never thought of it before!

1. Create a complex password and keep it to yourself

A basic password would be the name of your dog or any other word or combination of words that could be guessed. A complex password is, ideally, a random selection of letters and numbers. The truly paranoid will insist on some letters being capitalised. Even if you choose a couple of random words and throw a few numbers in between, that will be a step in the right direction!

Bad: rover Bad: success Bad: jamessmells Good: gh39dskj29 Good: apple253red Good: G39dEkj22

Also, make sure you always change any password provided to you upon creation of a new account.

2. When creating online accounts never use your email password

While most website developers and owners will do the right thing, others mightn’t and the opportunity for exploitation is there. When building an online forum, community website, or any other dynamic website or web-based application, a web developer will usually be careful to store your password using an encryption technique that will prevent anyone reading it.

Less honourable, or competent, web developers might store your password as plain text, allowing it to be read by them and/or anyone who gains unauthorised access to their database.

Avoid the worry and only use your email password for email.

3. Password-protect your email application

If you use Outlook, Outlook Express or any other desktop email application, and your computer is potentially accessible to others whom you don’t trust, make sure you put a password on your account so that noone sitting at your computer, other than you, can read your email.

Even if your email is boring, the greater concern is someone using an automated “Forgotten my password” service and having your passwords to your various online accounts sent to your email account.

4. Don’t open “funnies” and other suspicious attachments

I uninstalled my virus buster. It was slowing down my computer and I really don’t need it. Viruses, trojan horses and other nasties are introduced to computer systems by running software that has some malicious code in it.

Downloading and installing software from reputable software companies is safe. Opening “funnies” (even from people you know and trust) and attachments from anyone you don’t know is taking a big risk. Some types of attachments are quite safe, but unless you know how to make the distinction, it’s better to throw on Liar, Liar or Love Actually instead.

5. Automatically backup your incoming email, the easy way!

I have a separate Google Mail (GMail) account to which I have all my email automatically copied. This means that if I accidentally delete an email (it’s happened!) or I want to read my email at an Internet Cafe, I can login to GMail.com and do that.

Ask your web/email hosting provider how to set this up. Webnerd hosting clients can login to the Control Panel and use “Mail Forwarding” which will forward a copy of incoming email to the email address you specify while leaving a copy on the server.

If you have a Blackberry you can use this method to have your email go both to your computer and to your Blackberry.

6. Easily backup your outgoing email

I generally don’t do this myself but you can quite easily backup your outgoing email by Blind Carbon Copying (BCC’ing) your outbound email to your GMail account. Outlook Express users can enable BCC by clicking the “Create Mail” button; then selecting “View” from the menu; and making sure that “All Headers” is ticked.

If you’ve got any other thoughts or tips, feel free to send them my way. Many thanks to those of you who reply to my mail-outs with comments – it’s great to know who is reading them and which topics are most useful/interesting.

Wishing you happiness, health and success!