1) Your BlackBerry 10 Smartphone Password

Okay, so passwords aren’t the sexiest feature, but you know what — they’re probably the most important piece of security you can implement! Passwords keep strangers out of your BlackBerry device and out of your personal info. Best of all, with BlackBerry 10, the passwords don’t need to be long or even hard to type.

When unlocking a BlackBerry 10 smartphone, you have 10 tries to enter the password, which means that your passwords don’t need to be long or complex. Suppose I told you that my BlackBerry 10 password was 4 random lower-case letters – a very simple password. How many tries, on average, do you think it would take to guess it? 100? 1000? Try over 200,000! Complex passwords are always more secure, but the key is to make your password hard to guess.

See that icon on the right side of the password box that looks like an eye? You can tap that anytime to see what you’re typing. This is great for making sure that you’re typing in the right password. To hide your password, simply tap the icon again.

Your BlackBerry 10 smartphone password is also required for you to modify many of the security settings. So if someone gets ahold of your phone and tries to remove your password, they won’t have any luck. The same applies for changing the timeout on your password, toggling the “Lock Device when Holstered” setting, and more.

To create a password, navigate to Settings > Security and Privacy > Device Password.

2) Your BlackBerry ID

One of the most stressful parts of moving to a new smartphone is backing up your data. BlackBerry ID makes switching devices a breeze. If you lose or change your BlackBerry smartphone or tablet, your BlackBerry ID will remember your information and apps to make the switch easy.

Even better, BlackBerry ID is your single sign-in to BlackBerry sites, services and applications. Apps like BlackBerry World, BlackBerry Protect, and of course BBM all use BlackBerry ID. With a single password, you can protect the BlackBerry services that matter most to you.

When you start your new BlackBerry 10 smartphone, you will be asked to create or sign in with your BlackBerry ID. You can also manage your BlackBerry ID anytime by navigating to Settings > BlackBerry ID.

3) Application Permissions

Apps. We all love them, and we’re really excited about the wealth of apps available for BlackBerry 10! But we also value our privacy. Enter the concept of “Application Permissions”.

Application Permissions let you see, control, and customize what each application can access in a simple and intuitive way. Suppose you’ve downloaded a great new mapping app, and it asks for access to your Location. Of course you’re going to allow it – you’re expecting it and it makes sense.

Now suppose you download a simple game and it asks for your Location. Unless you know why, you might choose to deny access or uninstall it. Application Permissions allow you to manage and protect your privacy.

vWhile apps request the permissions they need when you install and run them, you can also modify the permissions later on by navigating to Settings > Security and Privacy > Application Permissions.

4) BlackBerry Protect

BlackBerry Protect is one of the most popular BlackBerry apps of all time, and for good reason. When the device is on, it can help you remotely locate your BlackBerry smartphone, set a password, and even wipe it from anywhere with an Internet connection. We’ve integrated BlackBerry Protect into every BlackBerry 10 smartphone, so you don’t even need to download the app anymore. Simply go to Settings > BlackBerry Protect to set it up.

But what if someone steals your BlackBerry and tries to disable BlackBerry Protect? Well in order to disable it, you need to enter your BlackBerry ID password. To quote my favorite YouTube show: “That’s smart!”

5) BlackBerry Balance

If you’re like most people, you use your smartphone for both work and play. You want to keep your work life separate from your personal life but still access all of your favorite personal apps and features, as well as your work connectivity, email, and corporate apps. But you just can’t do that on a single phone. Until now.

When your BlackBerry 10 smartphone is managed and secured by BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, BlackBerry Balance divides the data into two spaces: Personal and Work. Personal apps (e.g. games) access personal data and connect directly to the Internet. Work apps (e.g. expense reporting) access work data and connect through the corporate network behind your organization’s firewall.

On BlackBerry 10, you’ll be able to install apps, use social networks, manage photos, create videos, and take advantage of all that the smartphone has to offer. Your IT department will be able to manage the Work space and secure their corporate data.

Best of all, BlackBerry Balance starts up by default when you connect your BlackBerry 10 smartphone to the BlackBerry Device Service in BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. Simply create a Work password and start using BlackBerry Balance.

These are just a few of the great security features in BlackBerry 10, especially if you’re connected on BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. Which ones are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments!

In this final post in the series, I’m going to walk through a few more advanced tips for managing your mail and reducing headaches that come with a constant inflow of messages.

Exploring Email Account Options

Today let’s dig deeper by discussing a few more advanced tips, beginning with exploring the email account options on your device. You likely walked through the mail setup process when you first got ahold of your device, but let’s take a look at some of the more in-depth features that can make your communication even more of a breeze. On your BlackBerry® 7 or BlackBerry 6 smartphone, hit the “Setup” icon, or just type it into universal search to find it. You’ll see a screen like this:

When you head into “Email Accounts”, you’ll see two options: one for “Internet Mail Account” and the other for “Enterprise Account”. If you have an enterprise account setup, it’s likely managed by your IT department and requests for modification would likely need to go through them. In the event that you do not see the “Enterprise Account” option, please contact your wireless service for assistance.

Let’s look at the Internet mail account area – head in and then click on the account that you have set up (or set up a new one first!). There are a few things of note here that can help you out with email management:

1. General Options

Make sure that you have the “Your name” section filled out – this will display on recipient devices when you send a message. Additionally, you can modify your signature in this area. Opinions on this are mixed – some like to hide the fact that they’re using a mobile device, others like to include a “Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone” to make others aware when they’re on the road.

2. Delivery Options

Fun stuff in here – you can choose a “reply to” email address if you don’t want anything coming back to this particular account. This is useful if you’re changing email addresses; apply this setting to the old account to force everyone to slowly move over, even during a back-and-forth email conversation. Second is “Auto BCC”, which can send a copy over to an address of your choosing.

3. Synchronization Options

Depending on what features are supported by your mail provider, this area looks simple enough with the checkboxes for Calendar, Contacts, and Deleted Items, but they have big implications. Mail is synchronized by default, since after all, we are dealing with an email account that’s been set up. Calendar is useful to toggle if you only use the calendar of one email account – you can turn the others off so that they aren’t synchronized with your BlackBerry device. However, color-coding different calendars can help with that! Contacts and Deleted Items follow suit, allowing you to selectively synchronize specific components of your mail account.

The above options can help you to manually configure your mail accounts to the perfect settings that complement your style. You may have 3, 4, or even 10 email accounts, but use them in different ways and require unique components to be activated or deactivated on your BlackBerry smartphones. The email account options help you to get there.

The Unsubscribe Sweep

This was mentioned in passing within the last post in the series, but it deserves to be called out more clearly. We’re constantly interacting with digital services; signing up for new accounts, booking a hotel, or buying something online. Often during these travels we inadvertently get our email addresses thrown onto lists for “special offers” and the like. Unsubscribing from these can be arguably the single easiest thing you can do to lighten the email load on your inbox, with the biggest impact.

When I woke up this morning and checked my email, I had twelve messages that I had received during the night. Only three of them legitimately needed my attention, the others were from newsletters, notifications from social networks, and spam messages. I didn’t unsubscribe from them at that moment because it was 6:30 in the morning. No, I took the lazy route and did the “mark all as read” trick. It’s true; we don’t always have the time to do the unsubscribe sweep right then and there, so that’s why I’ve scheduled a recurring reminder in my calendar to give me a bump once a month to clean it all out at some point during that day. The results are fantastic: a huge reduction in the number of emails that I receive.

Tip: If you have social networking apps like Twitter® or Facebook® installed on your BlackBerry smartphone, then you likely don’t need the email notifications from these services – the apps will provide you with their own notifications when activity takes place. To learn more about setting up notifications for these apps, press the Menu key and select the Help option when using them.

Set Custom Notifications for Different Email Accounts

This is a great trick that is very under-utilized, in my opinion. We’ve got fantastic sound profile options with our BlackBerry smartphones with everything from Loud to Vibrate to Phone Calls Only. But, did you know that you can set up custom sounds for different email accounts? This is fantastic for those who have work accounts and personal accounts on the same device. When you’re at work, you can safely postpone personal emails without even looking at your device. Similarly, when you’re at home or spending time with family, you can leave those work emails until the morning.

To set up custom notifications for different email accounts, click on the little speaker at the top left of your home screen and then hit the button that reads “Change Sounds and Alerts”. This is where the magic happens: you can set up ring tones, modify sound profiles, remove profiles, and even set specific sounds for certain contacts. If you’re already using the sound profile that you want to modify for email account notifications, hit “Sounds for Selected Profile”. Otherwise, you can head into “Profile Management” and choose the profile that you want to modify.

You should see a screen that looks something like this (I’ve scrolled down to “Messages – Notifiers”):

If you choose one of these options, you’ll be able to set the notification tone, the volume, vibration, toggle notifications during calls, and toggle the LED light. With third party apps like BeBuzz Free – LED Light Colors you can even set a custom color (There are lots to choose from! I tried purple). Once you’ve got it where you want it, hit the “Try it” button to test it out, and feel free to tweak your settings until you’re comfortable. Beyond setting custom notifications for email accounts, try setting one for your boss, or your boss’s boss! This is an advanced warning system of sorts that gives you a heads up on what has just come in, before you even pick up your smartphone.

To learn more, head over to the BlackBerry Help Blog to discover how to set up ringtones, notifications, and alerts.

In Summary

Investigating your email account options in the Setup application is worth the time to make sure that you’re synchronizing properly and have all of your details in place – with certain tools especially useful if you’ve recently changing email accounts. Schedule reminders for an unsubscribe sweep to take a load off of your inbox with just a few minutes of effort. Lastly, setup custom notifications to give you advance warning of what’s hitting your inbox, and from whom. With these tips applied, along with those from Part 1 and Part 2 of the series, you’ll be blasting through your inbox with minimal headaches and saving time each day.

Have any more tips for mobile email management that weren’t covered in the series? Share in the comments below!