[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'll be polite and not say "He was lying through his teeth", and leave it at "Yeah, he's wrong." He's trying to sell you something. You question whether you need it. So do I.

I haver never heard of Gmail being successfully hacked. Yahoo and AOL, on the other hand, are very different matters.

Gmail is set for two factor authentication, with a very non-obvious password. The password is stored by my browser, and entered automatically.

Thanks a lot for the explanation, Dennis. So I use KeePass2 for most of my passwords but I figured I was safer having my important passwords offline written down somewhere. Firefox and Chrome are always asking to store my passwords and I'm always saying no. Would it be wise to store even my important passwords in the browsers? Or maybe they'd be better off in KeePass2?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Communication with Gmail is via https, so the session to it is encrypted. I am not concerned about my password being sniffed, nor my account being hacked.

Are we all vulnerable to keystroke sniffing all the time?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

(And as a rule, I do not consider email secure technology. In general, I don't say things in email that would give me heartburn if seen by third parties. Unless you are me, reading my email will be mystifying or profoundly boring, but you won't learn anything about me I'm concerned with keeping private. If it's that sensitive, that's what things like GPG are for, but I have yet to have a reason to use GPG.)

I don't say anything sensitive either. I just don't want to get hacked and then have the scumbag send out spoofing or phishing emails to my friends. (Or if it was my list, 5K readers.)

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't understand why you need a client at all.

Are you downloading mail to a local mailstore? Why?

I don't want a client. I used Thunderbird along time ago and didn't like it. It was just that Godaddy guy hammering me about how I needed a client.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And what does he think happens when an email client communicates with a server? Email servers want authentication, to prove you are the person authorized to access that email. They want a user id and a password. You create the account in the email client when you set it up. The client sends the user id and password as part of the negotiation when you check for email on the server. This is different from webmail how, exactly?

That's the thing. I never knew. He was just convincing me that if I had an email client I wouldn't be entering the password in the keyboard. Hence safer.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The practical difference between using a client and webmail is where the mail is when you access and read it.

Okay.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't understand why you need Essentials. (I haven't used it, and can't talk about how secure it is relative to Thunderbird.)

For that matter, I don't understand why you need GoDaddy. What do they provide for you?
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Dennis

I got Essentials because Godaddy's free email (that came with the website builder) was horrific.

And Godaddy hosts my website and their new website builder is really pretty good. And 24/7 telephone support is good. Most of the people are really good, but some are real salesmen. (I have to gear up for being sold something every time I call.)