Gmail as Gatekeeper
Using Gmail an intermediary provides a wide range of benefits not the least of which is anti-virus protection. As short background let me explain how I use Gmail and what my reasons for switching were. I largely work from home, reliant on a single computer which is backed up to an external hard drive via Apple’s very cool Time Machine, but that’s a topic for another article. The apparent risks associated with having all my work in the one physical location prompted me to research additional backup solutions.
For all my email communications, Gmail seemed the obvious choice. I now have all my email accounts linked to Gmail providing me with reliable backup, access anywhere in case I have to work on site for a client and the power of Google’s search technology to find any email. At home I use Apple Mail which in turn links directly to Gmail account and on to my personal accounts. The set up looks like this:
Gmail as a gate keeper
One benefit I hadn’t considered was anti-virus protection. As a Mac user you’re constantly told that you don’t need anti-virus but to my mind it doesn’t hurt if you do. For the past two or three months I’ve been bombarded with span mail, not via my Gmail account but rather via my linked personal email account. Below is a screen shot of one of the pesky little blighters.
Fig 2: Gmail virus filter.
Thankfully Google scans all incoming and outgoing emails and their attachments. If an infected file is detected, Google will try to clean it from the attached file. If cleaning isn’t possible, the system prevents the attachment from being download avoiding any potential harm. Google provide a help file on their anti-virus service.
Anti-virus scanning is one of the many benefits of Gmail and I hope this article is of some use. In future posts I’ll describe other uesful features in Gmail and a few of the other applications I use from Goolge’s suite of products, including:
