Guide to using ik. Me: Create a free email address forever, synchronize contacts and appointments, send large attachments and protect data confidentiality. When using free services, it is often said that the product is the user.
To offer a service for free without therefore requiring the payment of any subscription fee, many developers usually collect data relating to the activities carried out by users.
This information is then used for marketing purposes or resold to third parties. Ik.me is a free email service that does not profit from user data. Unlike other services, the content of emails and attachments remains confidential, and the manager does not carry out any type of analysis, not even automatic and anonymous, on the data stored on its servers. Provided by the Swiss company Infomaniak, ik. me is a mail service that differs from the competition in several noteworthy aspects:
- All users who activate an email address are enabled to a 20 GB mailbox.
- The service is compatible with the IMAP, POP3 and SMTP protocols so that it can be used with any email client.
- It does not show any advertising messages.
- Up to 3 GB can be sent per message. Attachments are kept for 30 days on Infomania k’s servers. This will ensure that your email recipients can download your files.
- Using another Infomaniak service ( SwissTransfer.com ), it is possible to transfer even heavier files. Using SwissTransfer.com, you can send files up to 50GB for free. No registration is required, and downloads are valid for 30 days.
- No data is collected on user activity and the content of emails sent and received.
- User emails are stored exclusively in Infomania k’s data centers in Switzerland. The company complies with the GDPR, is not publicly traded and is solely owned by its founders and employees.
Where’s the catch? Thomas Jacobsen, Infomania k’s communications manager, replies in all frankness: ” the goal, we make no secret of it, is to spread our brand and attract new European companies to our ecosystem. Infomaniak is the number one alternative to the Web giants, and our business model is not to sell our users ‘ data.”
How To Create A Free Forever Email Address With ik. Me
By clicking on Create a free email forever with a few simple steps, you can register a free 20 GB account. Just indicate the @ik.me email address you wish to obtain, specify an Italian mobile user on which to receive the SMS with the confirmation code and, preferably, another email address to facilitate account recovery in case the password gets lost.
The service has also recently been launched in India. You can continue with the registration of the free email address @ik .me indicating an Italian telephone number (+39).ik.me does not require particular confirmations to start using the service: type the numeric code received via SMS to continue.
Access to the ik. Webmail is done by clicking here: a short tutorial summarizes the main functions accessible through the interface.
The user can customize the webmail theme, the “density” of the elements (to display more or
less information on the same screen), and the preferred layout for displaying sent and received emails. It is also possible to decide immediately whether to group emails that refer to the same topic in the form of a discussion or whether to manage each message separately.
Ik.me also allows you to customize the size of the email composition window: full screen or positioned in the lower right corner.
Clicking Protect your account validates the secondary email address set when creating the ik. My account and enabling two-factor authentication is possible. By selecting Configure for Two-step validation and then Activate, it is possible to ensure that access to the mailbox’s contents is impossible by only entering the correct credentials.
In addition to the username and password, it will be necessary to confirm access to the ik. I account for using one of the proposed methods. The idea is to use the Infomaniak authentication app or applications such as Google, Microsoft or Sophos Authenticator ( OTP mobile application ).
How To Import Your Emails From Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo,…
Among the strengths of ik. It is possible to import emails and attachments stored on the accounts of other providers, including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, with a straightforward approach.
The import is carried out in the cloud and can even take a few hours to complete depending on the volume of mailboxes: Infomaniak does not rely on the user’s client device and does not use the network bandwidth of the local system because data transfer takes place directly between servers what we appreciated in ik.
I am the wizard for synchronizing emails, contacts and appointments on desktop PCs, notebooks, tablets and smartphones. By clicking on the On your computer or your phone or tablet button, you will receive instructions for configuring any mail client (incoming mail server address and outgoing mail server address) and instructions for setting up access to contacts and calendars.
From the ik. Me interface, it is possible to manage contacts, commitments and appointments by synchronizing them with all your devices: refer to the Your products icon at the top right. The automatic email backup function is also excellent: for those who use it. I can restore emails deleted from the account in the last seven days. A tool that allows you to remedy human errors and the deletion of messages that you only discover helpful later.
Send Heavy Attachments
By clicking on the Attach a file icon in the email composition screen, you can insert attachments with a weight not exceeding 25 MB. Suppose the attachment size exceeds 25 MB, ik. It still allows you to send large attachments of up to 3 GB by uploading them to Infomania k’s servers, much more than any other email service provider. To send files up to 50GB, you need to connect with SwissTransfer.com.
SwissTransfer is an equally accessible and without registration service, which protects users’ privacy by storing files on Swiss servers for 30 days from upload time. With a click on Use SwissTransfer, you will not have to take any additional steps: the voluminous file will be uploaded online, and a link will be added to the body of the email with the close deadline.
It should be noted that the link is public, so anyone who knows the download URL can download it without authentication and from any device. However, accessing the SwissTransfer home page directly makes it possible to protect the file uploaded to the Infomaniak servers with a password, set an expiration date and limit the number of downloads.
By clicking on the link and then on Advanced parameters, you will get a download URL that can be copied and pasted into the email composed on ik. Me. Alternatively, you can use the SkyDrive cloud storage service, which allows you to take advantage of a 3 GB online container in the free version to save your files and share them with other users.
With the free plan, you can also generate public links for downloading files; in this case, activating a paid profile can protect access to files with an authentication mechanism, with a password, and, if necessary, set an expiry date for the URL. SkyDrive also allows you to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents online directly from the browser, with the possibility of multiple users collaborating simultaneously. A handy feature indeed. For just 5 euros a month, you can secure 2 TB of space on SkyDrive.
Advanced Features Of ik. Me
Unlike other webmails, ik. I allow you to ask for a read receipt and activate it by default on each mail message sent. It is also possible to request unending an email within 15 seconds of sending it. They are going to the ik. Me settings (icon depicting a small gear), you can also ask the browser to show a notification when new messages arrive: tick the Show a report when new emails arrive box, then click on the Notifications button, Allow to this site in the address bar.
Among the advanced features of ik. We point out the possibility of setting customized rules for managing emails, creating multiple folders for sorting messages, defining lists of authorized and blocked senders, filtering advertising emails or those from social networks sending them to “ad hoc” folders, to customize the signatures to be applied to the emails.
Ik. me integrates a solid and effective anti-spam filter that prevents unwanted, potentially dangerous or malware-containing messages from entering your inbox. Finally, aliases management is foreseen: suppose you have a registered username, username@ik.me. You can use addresses containing additional terms (username+test@ik.me or username+web@ik.me ) specified with the “+” symbol.
All emails will always be delivered to username@ik.me. Last but not least, all emails sent and received with ik. I am not only encrypted end-to-end between the user’s device and the Infomaniak mail servers (thanks to the TLS protocol). Still, I am encrypted throughout the journey to and from the servers of other providers (MTA, mail transfer agent ), preventing other subjects from reading the content and modifying the information in transit. Infomania k’s free email solution won us over. Without any form of advertising and with 20 GB of storage at no cost, ik. Me today becomes the best alternative to Gmail and Outlook with the bonus of respecting user privacy.
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