Your e-mail account is a goldmine. Technology companies push hard to keep your data secure, but there are plenty of scumbags out there who always seem to find a new way to gain an edge over the guys in white hats. Phishers, in particular, are eager to find new ways to profit from your identity and information, and they're getting some new tricks.

Phishing scam activity was quiet at the beginning of this year, according to a report in USA Today, but these attacks surged 200% from May through September, says the X-Force team at IBM (NYSE: IBM). Webmail, social media and gaming accounts are their primary targets. E-mail access, in particular, is highly sought after, since they can be use to push out spam ... while bypassing filters.

These "virgin" e-mail accounts command top dollar: a digital criminal can pick up as much as $2 for a clean account from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Live, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) YahooMail or AOL (NYSE: TWX). This is more than twice the amount typically paid for a stolen credit card account, according to Fred Rica, principal in the security practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Many webmail users actually do half the criminals' job for them, with 33% using just one password online and 48% using only a handful.

Technology is getting more and more complex, but at the same time, amazing technological benefits are available to us average Joes without too much fiddling around. That is what this column will be covering. Once a week every Monday, right here at BloggingStocks.com, I'll feature an easy-to-use hack, gadget, or service that really can make your life better. Geeks, technophiles and early adopters have plenty of other places to look for hot new technologies to try. Here you'll find technology for the rest of us.

In today's world it's hard to escape email. Having a mail program beeping at you or telling you that "You Have Mail!" has become a common part of our day. It brings us information we need to know, pictures of our friends and family, jokes, memos, new tasks, and of course, lots of spam. But email can pile up pretty quickly. I've gone on vacations away from my home computer and returned to find hundreds of emails. It's overwhelming. And while you can set up an email program on another computer, you have to worry about where your archived emails are stored in case you have to access an old email for some critical piece of information.

I travel a lot and I have more than one computer. I also sometimes forget to bring my laptop places. As a result I've found that setting up my email so that it doesn't matter what computer I'm on or where I am is very important. There are two pretty easy ways to accomplish this, which I'll outline here today. And if you're running a small business without an IT infrastructure or department, making sure you have email independence means you won't have to worry about losing client emails or leads.