BleepingComputer.com: Teaching friends about computers

I was here on the virus and malware forum around the end of last year, because I have a friend who is somewhat computer illiterate (although a very smart professional in her own business). She had clicked on a link she shouldn't have, and, well, the rest is (thankfully!) ancient history. With help from Gringo, on here, we cleared out the mess the malware had made, and she's back in business

However. It's dawning now on us, here at my house, that this terrific lady really is pretty clueless about the internet and email. Oh, she uses email a lot, and I think that she even uses a browser pretty capably, too. But she has an inbox absolutely brimming full with SPAM as well as lots of important messages or messages that, although less important, I know she would want to see.

I use filtering and folders aggressively, to keep my own email under control. I think this could help my friend, but I haven't yet worked up the determination to say, "let me sign in to your account and organize things for you in there!"

For one thing, I know from here and also from my own work experience that, once you touch something, you sort of "own" whatever happens to it, and I'm wondering whether writing down some kind of game plan might be a good idea -- "I'll do x and y, I won't do z" sort of a thing. Did I mention that the friend I'm talking about has a law background?

Have you worked with anyone on getting control of their email inbox, especially on AOL? It's been a real long time since I even used AOL, although from all I can see, there are some capabilities that could help her, that she isn't using. Like me, shes' on a bit of a clearing-out and organizing tear, and so I think that this might be a good time to launch this project. Got any war stories to share?

Try to show her what you do with your accounts. Maybe she'll decide what to do from this. SHOW! Show and explain.

Hi!

That is a great suggestion. It is particularly a good idea because it helps her understand what she could do, AND, it's more motivation for me to continue to declutter and manage my OWN email inbox and folders! Thank you for that. I will still have to figure out with her, how to find the options in her AOL that allow you to do the inbox work -- I am using Thunderbird for my email these days. I've found one article, online, about creating folders and filtering mail into them. I don't know how current it will be though, because I've found a few out-of-date instructions about AOL just lately. But, one step at a time!