Since the introduction of Automatic Organizer for Yahoo! Mail earlier this year, many enhancements have been made to make saving your Inbox for real people even easier. We have been working hard improving Automatic Organizer to reflect the feedback from our users. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few new features now available to make your experience even more enjoyable.

File messages from new senders

Automatic Organizer is already set up to file messages from hundreds of different stores, social networks, and websites automatically without changing a single setting. However, if there’s a message from another sender that Organizer doesn’t pick up, it’s easy to change this. Simply drag-and-drop the message into the appropriate OIB folder.

Create your own OIB folders

In order to create your own folders for Automatic Organizer to use, simply add a new Yahoo! Mail folder and name it anything you like with the letters “OIB” in front of it, such as OIB Family, OIB Work, or OIB Restaurants. Then, drag-and-drop a message into this new OIB folder, and Automatic Organizer will file messages the same way from this sender in the future.

Change where your messages are filed

Within Yahoo! Mail, simply drag-and-drop a message from that sender from its current OIB folder to a new one. Or, you can open Automatic Organizer and choose a new folder or category next to the sender name.

Edit sender names

When a custom sender is created, sometimes the name of the sender is a
bit long or awkward. Open Automatic Organizer, click the sender name, type in a new name, and click OK.

Need help?

• Post a Question: Post a question, problem, suggestion (or even a praise!) on our support site, powered by Get Satisfaction.
• Tutorials: View a few short tutorial videos that demonstrate how to use Automatic Organizer.
• Twitter: Follow us on Twitter @OtherInbox
• FAQ: Have questions? We have answers.

Although we have undergone many improvements, we never stop discovering new ways to make Automatic Organizer work better for you. We are continuously rolling out new features with the help of our users. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. Thank you for your support!   

Over the last few months, OtherInbox has added several cool features,
and I want to make sure you are getting the most out of it.  Whether
you were one of the first beta testers or have just heard about it, there is probably something that will save you time in one of these videos. Click on the ones that are
applicable to you, or watch them all!  We would appreciate it if you
would share these videos with anyone you know who might need a little
help with email overload.

As always, thank you for your support!

(To view videos full size click on each screencast)

Connect OIB to your Gmail in 3 simple steps!

Connect OIB to your Yahoo! email

Go premium!

In addition
to keeping you organized and in control of your inbox again, OtherInbox
has many additional perks.  I wanted to share a few of the ways I use
OtherInbox to help me manage my work, hobbies, volunteer activities,
family, shopping, and even vacations.

How OIB helps me with my job

I’ve
had many superusers tell me that OIB has helped them with their
careers.  Several professionals, from hairdressers to leasing agents,
have reported ways that giving on the fly email addresses and having
organized mailboxes have made them more efficient and organized.  As
the Community Manager of OtherInbox, I use on the fly email addresses
to help me with networking, partnership activities, user feedback, and
volunteer organizations that we work with every quarter.  I give each
group their own email address, where they are all nicely organized and
easy to access in one place, my OtherInbox account. 

My own personal encyclopedia of knowledge

I,
like many people, have a lot of things I wish I knew how to do.  Being
a full time employee of an awesome startup and a full time parent does
not give me a lot of extra time to take classes and lessons.  However,
in the last year I have managed to learn how to start my first garden,
enhance my cooking skills, and stay up to date on the newest social
media trends!  How did I find the time to do all that?  I signed up for
the latest newsletters, blogs, and social groups like Ning and had them
all go to my OtherInbox!  It’s like customizing your own virtual
newspaper and reading it when you want to without it EVER overwhelming
your primary inbox.

My pond

Coupons and other money saving tips

We
all love a good bargain but not at the expense of giving out our email
address.  It is not worth overpopulating your inbox with spam and
risking it being sold to other companies.  My absolute favorite part of
having an OtherInbox is the ability to be fearless with my email
address.  I use an on the fly email to sign up for ANYTHING and
EVERYTHING I want.  It has become an obsession.  I sign up for all of
my favorite stores' newsletters, contests, and everything else I can. 
As a result, I get a ton of free stuff.  Free food, free books, and
coupons to all my favorite stores.  I still have not won anything, but
I check my OtherInbox daily to make sure.  It is kind of like playing
the internet lottery - for free!  Now, as you can imagine, I get
spammed all the time, but I don’t stress about it because I have the
power to keep spammers from ever emailing me again with just one
click.  I have also learned who leaks my email address out and will
never spend another dime in their stores or online with them.

All this money saving has made me want a vacation

Although
I have not yet saved thousands with OtherInbox, I still use it to sign
up for travel sites and possible vacation destinations.  My OtherInbox
notifies me of flight deals, discount vacation packages, and much
more.  When it is time to pack up the family and head out of Dodge for
a week or two, I know just where to go to get the most bang for my buck!

What do you do with your OtherInbox?

While
I hope some of this information was helpful, I am always amazed by the
creative ways other people use OIB to their advantage.  Share your
story with us, and email me at myoib[at]peeps.oib.com…oh look, I used it again .

One of my favorite features with OtherInbox is that it allows me to
sign up for EVERYTHING I want to with ease.  Like most people, I love a
good deal, and using OtherInbox proves there IS such a thing as a free
lunch.  Every week, I find amazing deals and coupons for something free
just waiting for me in my organized mailboxes.  I usually share these
finds with friends and family, but I want to do more. 

Some of
our users have shared these amazing finds from their OIB on twitter,
and we do our best to retweet these when they come up.  However, I
think we can do better than that.  I would like to ask you all to join
us in using #OIBFreebie on twitter when you find something cool or free
in your OtherInbox.  Then people can just search for free deals, and we
can share our treasures with each other.

Feel free to share them any day of the week as
well!

This morning on my way to work, I was listening to NPR.  A segment came on air about the recent rise in spam due to the mortgage crisis.  With many people worried about losing their homes and desperate to provide for their families, spammers are taking advantage of this time to steal your identity AND your money.  Right now, spammers are targeting this group of people to send them messages about mortgage protection packages and other scams that are designed to sound as legit as possible and to make people think it is a way of protection.

 Most of us read this and think, “Well, I would never fall for that.”  The problem is that we all know someone who might.  OtherInbox’s primary focus is to help you control email overload.  We do have other cool features like on the fly emails, blocking spam, and identifying who is selling or leaking your email address, but our main OIB users tend to be more technical in nature.  Our premium model and our feature roadmap focus on these more technical people and their needs. However, OIB’s simplicity and ease of use make it an ideal way for the people in our lives who are not as “tech savvy” to protect themselves from situations like the scam above. 

If you know someone who needs this protection, tell them about OtherInbox, and show them how to make special email addresses for things they sign up for and how easy it is to identify spam in these customized mailboxes. Feel free to share your funny spam headlines and stories with @mrspam on twitter!

This post was guest-written by OtherInbox beta user Beamer W.

Most emails that come through my OtherInbox account are one-way emails, which means you cannot reply to them. They are meant for notification purposes only. An example is a quick note to let me know I have a message waiting, eBay favorite searches, or Twitter following notifications, etc.

So why are those coming via email? Because that’s what everybody is used to. Unfortunately, email is highly overused, which contributes to “email overload.” There are plenty of other technologies that would work well at delivering these to you, but since everybody has an email account, that’s what we’re stuck with.

This is how OtherInbox met my zen needs. If you use Apple Mail, you probably know that you can receive RSS feeds. Luckily, OtherInbox feeds out RSS.

By simply copying the “All messages in your inbox” feed from your Notifications pane in Settings, you can easily add it to Apple Mail by clicking the + (plus) button in the bottom left corner.

From there, you have a very important option: “Show in Inbox.” This allows your feed to respond just like a mailbox would. The badge icon in your Dock increments just like it usually does. Just be sure to turn off “threading”, as it’s a little different for RSS feeds.

A great thing about this is if your messages are starting to overflow and you want to trim it down to just your personal emails, simply click the little down arrow next to your feed, and it moves it out of your inbox and into the RSS section, and doesn’t increment your badge icon. This is excellent when you need to focus.

I’m sure other email clients have the same capability, but I’m focusing on Apple Mail, because it’s what I use.

have checked them out. Most likely, I would have marked it as spam and waited for my 4inkjets newsletter that would never come.

It’s a big world out there. I am certain there are other oddities to find.

After signing up, your OtherInbox is ready to receive messages right away. However, you may be looking at an empty OtherInbox and wondering what to do next. This guide will show you how OtherInbox works. If you already know how to use OtherInbox, by all means, go right ahead!

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to email us or visit our support site where you can search previous topics, post your own questions, and vote for new features. Please also take a look at our frequently asked questions for additional getting started tips.

Trying out our features does no good without any messages, so let’s start by creating a few to work with.

Send messages to your OtherInbox from your main email account

You can create unlimited OtherInbox email addresses, but we’re going to start by sending to a few:

delete@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com
save@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com
block@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com

Automatic mailbox creation

In a few moments, check your OtherInbox and you should see three new mailboxes. They will be found in the second column, or the mailbox list. They will be called Delete, Save, and Block. This matches the first part of the OtherInbox email addresses you just created on the fly. No need to set them up in advance!

Note: To refresh your OtherInbox, click the OtherInbox logo at the top left-hand corner.

Deleting messages

Click on the Delete mailbox in the mailbox list. The message list will show the subject line, date, and sender for each message. The selected message can be viewed in the message reading area below. Above the reading area, click the Delete button.

Where did it go? To find it, let’s look at the first column. This is the folder list. Right now, you are in the Inbox folder. Click on the Deleted folder and you will find the Delete mailbox with the message you just deleted. Want it back in your Inbox folder? Click the Move to Inbox button above the message.

Saving messages for later

Maybe you have a message you want to save for later? Click on the Save mailbox. Select the message you want to save, then click the Save button above it.

Where is it now? In the Saved folder. You can always move it back to the Inbox if you want.

Permanently blocking addresses

One of the powerful features of OtherInbox is the ability to block a mailbox! Let’s say you give one of your OtherInbox email addresses to a newsletter, and they sell your email address. Because you have unlimited OtherInbox email addresses, you can just block it and never get any messages from anyone again!

Let’s block the entire Block mailbox. Select the Block mailbox and click the Block Mailbox button above the message list. You have now blocked this mailbox completely!

Try sending a new message to

block@YOURNAME.otherinbox.com

They will never show up in your Inbox again. No need to unsubscribe, hoping that it works. Just Block All!

If you’ve changed your mind, or accidentally blocked something by mistake, the blocked messages can always be found in the Blocked folder. Or, if necessary, you can also unblock the mailbox as well.

Think of a service that sends you messages you don’t need right away, such as notifications from Facebook or Twitter. Do you have a newsletter you receive daily but don’t need to read every day? Do you get weekly coupons from stores you only shop at every few months?

Start by changing your email addresses with these social networks, online stores, newsletters, or anyone who sends you automated messages that clutter your main email account.

Don’t let these messages get lost or fill your primary inbox, making it impossible to find real messages from family, friends, and coworkers. Send those other messages to your OtherInbox and *cure email overload forever!*

Liz B. Davis just posted a wonderful 2 and a half minute video screencast about how she uses OtherInbox. Take a look!

From a consumer’s perspective, it’s usually safer and will result in less email if you change your email address to a bogus one such as nobodyhome@nobody.com than to click on the unsubscribe link. Sometimes the only option is to unsubscribe, but many times you will also see an option to “update your email address” or change your “account settings” and you can change your email address from the real one to anything else that you want.

Unsubscribing usually consists of clicking an unsubscribe link, typing in your email address, and then clicking to unsubscribe one more time.

Updating your email address usually consists of logging into your account, going to the account settings page and entering your new email address. Sometimes you’ll be required to confirm your new email address by clicking on a link in an email.

Both changing your email and unsubscribing should stop the immediate messages from coming, but using the unsubscribe link has more risk because the marketer could decide to email you again later or could give your email address to someone else (accidentally or on purpose).

When you unsubscribe, your email address is either deleted or it is saved in a “suppression list” so that know not to send you email in the future. This file gets stored in the email software and can be accessed by the system administrators and the marketers who operate the business. If one of those people has bad intentions they can steal the list and sell it to spammers. Ex-employees are also a common source of list theft.

When your address is laying around in a suppression list, it is susceptible to being abuses or hacked (safer if the list owner uses MD5). Even if all of the employees act appropriately, many businesses have poor practices that expose suppression lists to theft and abuse.

In order to comply with the national CAN-SPAM law, the suppression list must be shared with third parties in order to make sure they don’t send email to users who have previously unsubscribed. While the intent is good, many suppression lists are shared in an insecure way that makes it easy for spammers to steal the lists of email addresses and send them spam.

The result is that you get more spam after unsubscribing because you email address is put on the suppression list and then the suppression list gets stolen by spammers. It’s kind of ironic, but it happens every day. For the most recent examples, just ask our friends over at Lashback.

In the worst case, the list owner may use your unsubscribe request as a signal to send you more email. This is illegal and I don’t think its very common, but its still something that many users are concerned about.

When you change or update your email address (if that option is available) your old email address is usually replaced by the new one. It’s an edge case that most people haven’t spent much time thinking about.

In almost every mailing list software that I know of, changing your email address actually overwrites the old one with the the new. This means there is usually no record of the old email address at all. Maybe its in a log file that will get deleted after 30 days. But its not put anywhere that gets saved permanently or shared with other marketing companies.

All mailing list software used to work like this, in the days before spam and suppression lists. The early software packages were MLMs such as Majordomo and Listserv. The subscriber email addresses were stored in files (today most are stored in databases) and unsubscribing actually deleted your email address from the file.

Then database solutions such as Lyris came out and they didn’t delete email addresses that unsubscribed, they just marked the record as unsubscribed and made sure to never send email to email addresses marked unsubscribe. This was good because it helped with reporting and protected against accidentally re-importing an address that had previously unsubscribed. But it’s bad from the consumer’s perspective because it means that your email address is hanging around permanently.

Then CAN-SPAM came along and made it a requirement that unsubscribed email addresses be saved forever. This was also done with good intentions — in an attempt to protect the consumer from receiving unwanted advertisements. But the result is that email addresses are kept permanently instead of being deleted, the lists are shared between different companies, and this creates additional risk for the user.

And this risk is not theoretical! Suppression lists get stolen every day. One of the most common ways is through affiliate networks that post suppression lists on FTP servers as plain text files rather than using MD5 encrypted files or hosting their suppression files securely at UnsubCentral. A spammer can just sign up for an account at an affiliate network, download millions of email addresses in suppression lists, and send them tons of spam. I tried this out at a large email affiliate network and within 24 hours had downloaded 10 million email addresses.

Those of you who know me from my days at SKYLIST, UnsubCentral, Datran Media, and the Email Service Provider Coalition may be surprised to hear me say that. After all, I’ve always been a strong proponent of unsubscribe standardization and best practices.

I don’t think this is in conflict with my previous statements. It’s just focused on a different perspective. From the marketers perspective, they should do everything they can to build consumer trust, protect consumer privacy, and comply with the law. From the user’s perspective, they should do everything they can to protect themselves. They owe no allegiance to the marketers.

Am I suggesting that people should always take the time to update their email address to nobodyhome@nobody.com instead of unsubscribing? No I’m not. It just wouldn’t be worth the extra effort. But if you are subscribing from something that looks particularly spammy and they give you an option to change your email address instead of just unsubscribing, you might consider doing that instead.

Of course, if you have an OtherInbox account you don’t need to worry about this because you can always turn off that address to safely unsubscribe and easily avoid any future messages no matter what happens to the suppression list.