This short tutorial will take you through the process of getting an email address, which you may need for communicating with family, applying for jobs or applying for benefits of any kind.

There are several services that offer free email addresses, the simplest one to understand and use is Google’s Gmail service. It is free, as are Windows Live/hotmail and yahoo. The process is basically the same with all of them, you will go through and sign up for the email address, which consists of giving them your name, birthdate and some other basic information. Be aware though, that you should never, (really, NEVER) give anyone online your social security number, bank card numbers or anything similar, for your own protection!

That said, there are occasions where you are purchasing something online, and you will need your credit card information, but those should be from trusted retail stores and will be made using security systems that will keep your information safe from predators.

Once you have successfully filled out the application with your name, birthdate and etc it will ask you to choose a username and password. A few words about usernames: so very many people have email addresses that you may have to work hard to find one that is both memorable to you and unique enough to satisfy the email service. Every person’s email address is different, by at least one character, from every other email address in the world.  I often suggest you use your first name, last name and a 4 digit number, along with at least one special character like “. , :@” or other similar character. You may have to try several times before you get a good username that is unique to you.

Once you have a valid username you can go on to construct a password. Your password, in general, must be at least 8 characters long, though more is always better. You will almost always be required to have at least one capital letter, one number and one special character like the @ symbol. The best password advice today suggests that you use a familiar word, and make one of the interior letters a capital. Then look at the word and choose a letter that resembles a number, and replace that letter, for example, “s”, with a “5″.

This kind of replacement scheme allows you to satisfy the number and letter requirements without having to remember a string of junk letters. So, if I wanted my password to be “December” I would use “0ecember” (zero, e, c, e, m, b, e, r) and follow it up with a string of special or normal characters, repeated in sets to make the password 12 or 14 characters long. In this case my password might be “0ecember/./././.”  Passwords constructed in this way are considered to be very strong, and much harder to break than traditional word/number combinations that might appear in the dictionary. If my password was simply “december1969″ it would be broken in about 13 hours by the password decryption programs that are in use today; however, the “0ecember/./././.” password would take more like 800,000 centuries!

You can check the strength of your password by entering it at  https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

Once you have chosen a strong password you will be asked to enter it twice, so that the computer knows that you have typed it correctly. Please take a moment now and write down your email address and password, so that you do not lose it while you are getting used to having an email address!

Once you are past the user id and password part of the application you will be asked to type some letters that look all squigly and possibly out of focus. This is a tool to stop the spammers from getting millions of email addresses and lets the email provider know that you are a human being who is capable of reading a picture of some letters and numbers. Simply type the letters/numbers as they appear into the box provided.

The next step is to read and agree to the terms of service. The listed companies all have very similar terms of service, which generally state that you are not allowed to do anything illegal with your email account, and if caught doing so may be subject to penalties of several kinds. I encourage you to read through the terms of service so that you are familiar with them, as it is a legal agreement!

You will then check the box that says that you have read and agreed to the terms of service, click the button that says “sign up” or something similar, and you will be on your way, if everything was answered appropriately.

At this point you will usually be taken to your inbox, where your new, incoming emails reside until you open them, read them, or delete them.

There are many more tips on dealing with your email to come, so please check back soon!

7/28/2011