Work From Home How Tos

Typically, our blog articles focus more on B2B security industry news than consumer level, but since a big chunk of the country is working from home (if available) and self quarantined, we figured you’re probably spending a little more time than you’re used to in your home.

Being home for extended hours marks a great opportunity for you to take care of some things that would usually be priority 1,000,000 on your list. In the tech world, one of the biggest issues that is discussed on a daily basis is privacy. Whether it’s about Ring security cameras getting hacked or Clearview AI, there is no shortage of privacy concern for the average consumer.

Have Google Assistant Delete Conversations

Pretty much all the tech giants record all of your interactions online or when you are using one of their AI platforms. Ever notice Amazon Alexa will start advertising certain items you were recently talking about. We know our devices are listening to us, but if you have a Google Assistant enabled device in your home (or on your phone), you can actually take privacy into your own hands. You can literally say “Hey Google, delete my last conversation.” A few other phrases that will accomplish this goal are “Hey Google, delete this week’s activity,” or “that wasn’t for you.”

All of these phases will have Google Assistant delete whatever it heard from the activity log. We know it’s a small thing, but it might provide a small sense of relief that you can still have a private conversation even while your tech is around.

Unsubscribe

Even before working from home, your company inbox was more than likely flooded with emails. Now that it is the primary source of communication throughout your company, the emails are more than likely rolling in like an unstoppable flood. Now more than ever you don’t want important emails getting mixed up with junk or spam mail. And unfortunately, spam filters don’t catch all the junk.

In the security monitoring industry, we all subscribed to different newsletters, event forums etc. After those events have passed, newsletters still continue to roll in about things that might not apply to you anymore. Take this extra time at the computer while you’re working from home to unsubscribe from some of those unwanted newsletters and other spam or junk.

Scroll to the Bottom

We’re referring to junk emails, not this article. Generally, within an email, you can scroll to the very bottom and find the unsubscribe button or like text there:

But instead of clicking into every email that you don’t want to read and scrolling down to the bottom of the page, Google makes it much easier to unsubscribe from unwanted mailing lists.

Gmail and Outlook

When you click into the email, at the top of the email, next to the name of the sender, you should see an unsubscribe button.

By clicking that, and following one more “are you sure you want to unsubscribe” prompt, you will be successfully removed from that client’s mailing list.

You can also click the little down arrow next to “me”:

And go to unsubscribe from this sender. Use this option if you don’t see the unsubscribe button next to the sender’s name.

Similar to Gmail, Outlook allows you to unsubscribe to unwanted emails at the top. Instead of being to the right of the sender’s name, look just above. You should be able to see an unsubscribe button. When you click on it, you will get one final prompt warning you that you are about to unsubscribe from the list. If this is what you want to do, go ahead and click unsubscribe to finish the job.

It’s a little tedious, but unsubscribing to unnecessary emails can actually make you far more productive at work. You’ll be more organized and it will make it less likely that an email that you actually need doesn’t slip through the cracks.