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Changing your email provider

August 5, 2025August 10, 2025 Ask UrsulaLeave a comment

Do you still have the email address your ISP (internet provider) gave you? What will happen when you change internet providers? Will you still be able to access this email for free? It might be time to hoose your own email provider, here are a few points why:

Access your emails from any program (Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird) plus from the web and you can customise how the pages look and function
Spam filters are generally much better with other email providers
Your inbox is usually much bigger, a few fancy catalogues or pictures won’t fill it up and prevent you from getting new messages
Some email providers allow you create ‘dummy’ email addresses or aliases that allow you to sign up for newsletters and more without disclosing your real email address. If they get difficult about cancelling the newsletters or other email, you just discard that address and all is good.

So how do you change your email address?

Have a look on the web what is around (e.g Gmail.com, Outlook.com, ), compare what they provide and choose one (or even 2 or 3, you can have an unlimited amount of email addresses, not just one) of them.
Sign up and make sure you provide recovery methods (like a phone number, another email …) so you can get to your emails if you happen to forget your password.
Send an email to all you contacts informing them of your new email address
Make sure you contact any businesses, websites, streaming services and other online accounts (bank, myGov…) etc on THEIR WEBSITE OR PHONE to change your email address, they generally do not accept changes any other way.
If you can, set up automatic forwarding from your old email address to your new address and monitor this for any senders you missed
You could also set up automatic replies from your old email address to inform any senders of your new address

It requires a bit of work, but it is definitely worth it.

What else is the camera is good for

August 5, 2025August 10, 2025 Ask UrsulaLeave a comment

Last time I told you about the amazing things Google Lens can do, but even just your camera can do
much more than taking snapshots. Here are just a few ideas:

Keep a photo of your pet and their ID, that way you have a photo handy if he/she goes missing
(could be a good idea for kids, too, perhaps?)
Use it as a notebook: take snaps of recipes in magazines, plants, art, decorations that you like and
would like to try out yourself
If you rent a car, take a picture of the car and the number plate; easier to find if you don’t
remember exactly what is looks like
Or even with your own car in a strange carpark, take a photo with indicators like row/level
number etc to find it again afterwards
If you keep a shopping list on a whiteboard on the fridge, take a photo of it before going
shopping, no need to transcribe it. Also, you could take a photo of the contents of your fridge to
see what you have and what you need
Take a photo of any cable/plug placement before you move them, easier to put everything back
where it belongs afterwards
If there is a label in a shop high up, and you can’t see it properly, hold up your phone and take a
picture of it (or even if the print is just too small); and then zoom in

I’m sure there are a million other things where this always there little camera can help. Just remember to delete the photos when you don’t need them anymore.

What does it mean when a website asks you to create an account?

August 5, 2025August 10, 2025 Ask UrsulaLeave a comment

There are usually one of two reasons for this:
a) Creating an account will allow you to return to the site with your data saved (e.g. if you are doing
tutorials, or if you are shopping)
b) no particular reason noticable.
In either case, an ‘account’ has nothing to do with money, only with identification.

In case a) Enter your email address and a NEW PASSWORD, DO NOT USE THE PASSWORD FROM YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS! The email address identifies you (like your name) and the password is the key to open the door. You would not have one key that opens all doors you are likely to come across 😉—so do not use one password to allow access to every website.

In case b)
The reason is most likely to send you emails (that you might not want) or to collect data about you. If
you really want to continue on the site, and it won’t let you go further until you entered an email address, I would suggest you use a ‘dummy email address’, not your normal one. The best way to do this, is to create an email address with a free service (like gmail, hotmail or similar) and use that email address for when you don’t want to have any communications from the site. You can then just ignore any email going to that address, and it should keep your proper inbox a bit cleaner.

And yes, it is a pain to have so many ‘accounts’ and having to remember all those passwords. Consider
using a password manager, which is a small program that keeps track of all your passwords (encrypted,
so that only you can access them) and even enters them automatically into the correct websites. Some of them even allow you to create one-off so-called aliases that work similar to the ‘dummy email’, but that is a subject for another time