If you are a busy person and cannot handle all your emails by yourself, then you can seek the help of others like your spouse or secretary so that they can read, send and delete emails on your behalf. You do not have to tell them your Gmail password for doing so, just delegate access to your Gmail account to their Gmail account. This way they can read, send and delete messages but cannot alter password or any other Gmail settings for your account. Here is how you can delegate access to your Gmail account :
- Visit http://mail.google.com/ and logon to your Gmail account.
- Click on the gear like settings icon and then choose Mail settings on the top-right.
- On the Mail settings page, select the Accounts and Import section. Then scroll down and click on the Add another account in the Grant access to your account sub-section as shown,
- Enter the email address of the Google account to which you want to delegate account access. Only Gmail account holders are allowed. Then click on the Next Step button.
- You will be shown a confirmation message. This is the final step. Click on the Send email to grant access to continue. An email would be sent to the Google account you want to delegate access to. After following the directions in that email message, that person would be able to access your Gmail account and read your email messages.
For more information about this delegation feature in Gmail, you can check Gmail help pages at http://mail.google.com/support/.