|
© 2003, 2004, 2005 Trinidadusa.net
WWW.TRINIDADUSA.NET:
Serving Trinidad, Walsenburg, Aguilar, Cokedale, Branson, Kim, Segundo, Weston, Stonewall, Cucahara, LaVeta, Gardner and most places in between!
Using Email at Trinidadusa.net
I. FEATURES
|
General Features:
- Use either POP3 or IMAP4 to read and retrieve your mail
- Access your accounts from any computer on any Internet-connected network in the world. Just point your browser to http://webmail.trinidadusa.net.
- Web email supports English, Spanish and 30 other languages.
- Change passwords and account information whenever you wish.
- Forward your mail to another account anytime it's convenient.
- Manage Vacation settings for each of your accounts
Virus Prevention Features:
- Virus scanning is enabled by default.
- Every incoming message is checked against a database of more than 25,000 virus definitions.
- The virus definition database is updated every hour of every day.
Spam Prevention Features:
- Spam filtering is enabled by default
- You can turn anti-spam filtering on or off at will for each of your accounts
- You can "fine tune" the level of spam filtering performed on each of your accounts.
- Filtered spam goes in a special "Spam" folder in your mailbox which you can check anytime yo want and retrieve accidently filtered legitimate email. You never run the risk of losing an important message because the mail server thought it was spam.
- You can "blacklist" specific domains, senders, subjects, etc and the mail server will dump that mail into outer space before you ever see it.
- When spam does get through, just forward it to spam@trinidadusa.net, so the spam filter can learn from it's mistakes.
II. HOW TO MAKE EMAIL BEHAVE YOUR WAY
This section tells how to change your account settings.
- Point your browser to http://managemail.trinidadusa.net. You can also click the "Customize Your Mail Settings" link at www.trinidadusa.net. You'll see a login screen (Figure 1).
Figure 1
- Type your user name and password in the boxes provided. If it's not already selected, choose "trinidadusa.net" (or whatever domain your account belongs to) from the drop-down box at the right. Click "Login". You'll be presented the screen shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
- MODIFYING YOUR IDENTITY. If you want to modify the default "real name" shown on your outgoing mail (i.e. you'd like the "From:" line to say "George Washington <george@trinidadusa.net>" instead of "George <george@trinidadusa.net>"), change the "Name" field and click "Submit Password". This is a default setting, which means that if you set a different name in your email program it will override what you type here.
- CHANGING YOUR PASSWORD. To change your password, simply type a new one in the "Password" box and verify it by typing it again in the "Verify Password" box. Then click "Submit Password". Note: Changing your password here effects your email account only. It does not change the password you use to log on to the Internet.
- SET MAXIMUM MESSAGE SIZE. Set this if you want to reject messages larger than a certain size. Most people never need to do this. "0," the default, means you'll accept messages of any size.
- VACATION SETTINGS. If you're going to be out of touch for some reason, you can have the server send an automatic reply---perhaps something like "I will be in San Francisco through Sunday, Sept. 9. I'll be in touch when I get back."---to everyone who sends you email. To activate this feature, check "Vacation on", type your message in the box provided, and click "Submit Profile." To stop vacation messages, uncheck "Vacation on" and click "Submit profile." Currently, your vacation message is limited to 256 characters in length. We hope to eliminate that restriction in the future.
- FORWARDING. You can have your mail forwarded to another email address. Just check "Forwarding on," type the email address in the box provided, and check "Submit profile." To stop forwarding, uncheck "Forwarding on" and click "Submit Profile."
- When you're finished making changes, click "Logout."
III. ABOUT VIRUS SCANNING
Our anti-virus software checks all incoming mail against a database of more than 25,000 virus definitions. The database is updated hourly to keep virus protection as up-to-date as possible. Incoming messages which contain viruses are silently consigned to deep space.Virus scanning is enabled by default on our mail server and you don't need to do anything in order to enjoy its protection. It cannot be turned off, nor is there any reason to.
Please remember that not all viruses and worms are acquired via email. Server-side virus scanning is not a substitute for adequate security precautions on your own computer.
|
IV. SPAM PREVENTION
We use a two-part spam-filtering strategy:
- Rejecting mail from domains known to originate spam and/or harbor spammers. Such domains are said to be "blacklisted."
- Applying various "tests" to contents incoming messages to determine if they are spam. The spam-filtering software which applies these tests is named SpamAssassin. You have considerable control over how SpamAssassin filters your incoming mail. If you want, you can turn off SpamAssassin completely.
How Blacklisting Works
Every piece of incoming mail that arrives at our server in checked against two "blacklists" of known spam domains and "open relay" servers. They are:
- sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org is a realtime blocklist of spam sources, spam services, and illegal 3rd party exploits (proxies, worms, trojans, etc.).
- list.dsbl.org, the Distributed Server Boycott List, is a list of known "open relays." An open relay is an innocent but insecurely configured mail server that spammers can use to "relay" their handiwork, thus hiding their point or origin. Spammers search the Internet for open relays and find a surprising number of them. There is no excuse for anyone operating an open relay. It is trivially simple for any system administrator, even a novice system administrator running Windows, to make his mail server useless to spammers.
Mail arriving from a source listed by either of these two organizations, as well mail containing attachments with potentially viral extensions (".pif", ".scr", ".vbs", ".exe", etc.) is rejected the minute it arrives.
There is little danger that this will effect your normal correspondence. No legitimate network harbors spammers. Any legitimate network that gets blacklisted (by accidently opening a relay, for example) will immediately deal with the situation that caused the listing and get themselves de-listed within a few hours.
How SpamAssassin Works
SpamAssassin applies a variety of tests to incoming mail in order to identify spam. These include:
- Header analysis: Spammers use a number of tricks to mask their identities, fool you into thinking they've sent a valid mail, or fool you into thinking you must have subscribed at some stage. SpamAssassin tries to spot these.
- Text analysis: Spam mails often have a characteristic style (to put it politely), and some characteristic disclaimers and CYA text. SpamAssassin can spot these, too. We also scan message content for URL's to sites that are known to use spam to promote themselves.
- Learning: SpamAssassin uses probability-analysis to "learn" new ways to detect spam.
- "Distributed hash databases": Vipul's Razor, Pyzor and DCC are collaborative spam-tracking databases, which work by taking a signature of spam messages. Spam typically operates by sending an identical message to thousands of people. These databases short-circuit this process by allowing the first person to receive a spam to add it to the database -- at which point everyone else will automatically block it.
Each time an incoming email flunks a test, SpamAssassin adds the value of that test to the email's "spam score." For example, an email might come from a domain known to harbor spammers (score: 2.0), the body might contain the phrase "Click below" (score: 0.6) and contain a link to a site known to promote itself through the use of spam (score: 2.0) The total score for this email is therefore 4.6, high enough that we are nearly certain it is spam.
Every email that earns a Spam Score of 2.0 or higher gets the score discreetly added to the end of the subject line like this: "[2.6]" for your information.
Using the Spam Controls
You'll find two settings in your account Control Panel (Figure 2) which control how you handle spam:
- SpamAssassin Tag Score. Emails that earn a Spam Score higher than the "SpamAssassin Tag Score" will have headers ("X-Spam-Status: YES" and some others) added which indicate that the message is probably spam. These headers are not normally visible while you're reading your mail, but make it easy for your email client to sort out ("filter") spam and deal with it however you wish. Use your mail client's "Show headers" feature to see them.
- SpamAssassin Refuse Score. This is really misnamed, since your mail is never "refused." Emails that earn a Spam Score higher than the "SpamAssassin Refuse Score" will be automatically stashed in a folder named "Spam" in your inbox on the mail server.
You can check it now and then if you want to (to make sure no desired mail has been accidently flagged as spam). If you don't want don't to, you needn't bother. Email is the Spam folder will be automatically deleted when it is two weeks old. Most people find they can safely ignore their Spam folder, except to take a look it it if an expected email fails to arrive.
If you use IMAP to manage your mail, your "Spam" folder will be visible in the folder list along with whatever folders you create in your mailbox.
If you are a POP3 user (you use Outlook Express, for example), your Spam folder won't normally be visible. To check your Spam folder, point your browser to http://webmail.trinidadusa.net and choose conmnection type "IMAP" when you log in. See "Using Web Email" below for more information.
If you don't have a folder named "Spam", it is because you've never recieved an email that earned a spam score higher than the SpamAssassin Refuse Score. Lucky you. The server will create your Spam folder when needed. You need not create it manually (and shouldn't unless you know exactly what you're doing).
The higher the Tag Score and Refuse Score you select, the more spam will get through. The lower the scores, the greater the danger that legitimate email will be mistakenly treated as spam. This is not a huge danger, since the worst thing that can happen is that you may have to fish some real email back out of the Spam folder.
The defaults (Tag Score 2.0, Refuse Score 5.0) seem to be a good starting point for most people. Watch the Spam Scores reported in subject lines and adjust your refuse and tag scores accordingly. When you change your spam scoring preferences, the changes take effect as soon as you click "Submit Profile."
DISABLING SPAMASSASSIN. If you want to turn off spam filtering completely, just change the SpamAssassin Tag Score and the SpamAssassin Refuse Score to 100. Then click "Submit Profile." Note that even with spam filtering turned off, you'll still see spam scores reported in the subject lines of incoming messages. No filtering will be done, however.
HEADER BLOCKING FILTERS. You can block mail from your mailbox based on sender, subject and other header content. Choose the header type from the drop-down box, type the content to block in the box provided and click "Submit." This is an advanced feature which you'll probably never need, but it's there if you do.
V. READING, SENDING, AND MANAGING MAIL
POP3 or IMAP?You can connect to your mailbox using either POP3 ("Post Office Protocol") or IMAP4 ("Internet Message Access Protocol"). Many email clients (Mozilla, KMail and Evolution, for example) support both protocols. Our web-based email reader (http://webmail.trinidadusa.net) also supports both.
POP3 is a simple, reliable way to retrieve mail. Messages are downloaded to your computer. POP3 is probably the best choice for most people.
When you use IMAP, messages are stored on the server instead of being downloaded to your own machine. This is convenient if you want your mail available on more than one machine or location.
IMAP adds some additional features, including:
- The ability to create folders and sort mail on the server without downloading it.
- The ability to distinguish between read and unread messages on the server.
- The ability to synchronize the mail folder on your computer with your mail box on the sever.
- The ability to search messages while they reside on the server.
- Easy access to your "Spam" folder (see above).
IMAP4 makes sense when you connect to your email account from many machines or from machines you don't own. If you're going to school and reading email from the campus computer labs, IMAP is definitely the way to go.
If you always read mail on a single computer which you own or control, use POP3. Also choose POP3 if you're new to email and want to keep everything as simple as possible.
Here are a few other considerations:
- You can use both POP3 and IMAP to access the same account without hurting anything. The special features of IMAP will not be available when you login via POP3 and mail you've moved into folders on the server will not be visible.
- You're welcome to store mail on the server and manage it via IMAP, but remember that your mailboxes have a 10 MB size limit. At some point you'll need to actually delete or download some mail.
- Also, for reasons of privacy, we do not archive or make backups of your mail. Backups, if you want them, are your sole responsibility. The easiest way to backup your mail is to download it to your computer via POP3, then treat it the same way you treat other important data on you machine.
- When you use IMAP, some poorly-coded mail clients re-read your whole mailbox every time you do anything. This can make mail management tediously slow if you're using a dial-up connection and have a lot of mail.
Using Web Email:
This is the easiest way to access your Trinidadusa.net email accounts. Point your web browser to http://webmail.trinidadusa.net. You'll be presented with this login screen:
Figure 3
Type your email address and password in the spaces provided. Choose the type of connection you wish to make, IMAP or POP3 (see above). Choose your language (if not English). Then click "Log in."
The first time you login you'll see an "Options" screen that includes a great many settings you can tweak if you want to (Figure 4).
Most of this stuff you can ignore for now, but you should take a moment to create an "Identity", which the web mail program will use to fill in the To and Reply-To fields in your out-going messages. To access the Identities screen, click on the "Identities" link (circled in red in Figure 4) . Type your name, email address, add a signature block if you wish, click the "Set to default" check box, then click "Add". You can have as many identities as you wish and add more at any time. They only apply to mail sent via Web mail, not mail you send using an email client like Mozilla.
Figure 4
Now click the "Inbox" link to see your mail (Figure 5).
- Click on a message to read it, reply to it, or forward it.
- To delete a message, move it to a subfolder or mark it as read or unread, click in it's checkbox (just left of the message subject) and then click the appropriate button at the bottom of the message list. You can manipulate several messages at once this way. If logged in via POP3, you'll see fewer options.
- When you are finished, don't forget to click the "Logout" link to end your session.
Figure 5
Creating Folders. One of the nice features of IMAP is the ability to create folders on the server to organize your mail. Here's how to do it. Suppose you wanted make a folder named "Friends" and inside it make three more named "Larry", "Moe" and "Curlie." You would:
- Make sure to choose "IMAP" when you login. Folders aren't visible when using POP3.
- Click on the "[Manage Folders]" link near the left-hand side of the screen.
- In the "Create new folder" text box type "INBOX.Friends" (without the quotes) and click "Create."
- In the "Create new folder" text box type "INBOX.Friends.Moe" and click "Create" again.
- Repeat Step 3 for Larry and Curlie.
You should end up with a folder structure that looks like the one shown near the left-hand side of Figure 5.
Using an Email Client
There are hundreds of programs you can use to read and send email. Outlook, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer are probably the most commonly used and also the most insecure. Most Internet viruses and worms could not spread were it not for the the gaping security holes in these three applications. If you care about your data and your privacy, don't use them.
We strongly recommend Mozilla, a stable, secure, free and easy-to-use suite of Internet applications, including a nice browser and a nice email client. You can download Mozilla at http://www.mozilla.org or stop by our office and pick up a CD (no charge). Mozilla runs on Window95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Unix, Linux, MacOS, OS/2 and other operating systems.
Mozilla Thunderbird is the newest incarnation of the Mozilla email client. It is a stand-alone program, not part of an application suite. It also comes highly recommended. Use which ever one you prefer. The following setup instructions apply equally to both.
How to set up Mozilla Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird
- Start Mozilla. In the main menu, select Window > Mail & Newsgroups. If this is the first time you've done this, a dialog box should pop up called New Account Setup. If this doesn't happen, choose Edit > Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings. Click on Add Account...
- Select Email Account and click Next.
- Enter Your Name as you'd like it to appear in email sent by you, e.g. Lonny L. Lester. Enter your email address, e.g. lonny@trinidadusa.net. Click Next.
- Use the radio button to select the connect type you want, POP3 or IMAP. The Incoming Server is mail.trinidadusa.net. The Outgoing Server is also mail.trinidadusa.net. Enter these values and click Next.
- For Incoming User Name and Outgoing User Name, enter your whole email address, e.g. lonny@trinidadusa.net. Click Next
- Give the account a name. You can accept the default name, probably something like lonny@trinidadusa.net. Click Next.
- Double check your information and click Finish.
- If a dialog box pops up asking if you want to use Mozilla as the default mail application, it is safe to click Yes.
- You will be prompted for the mail server password when you check your mail. Check the box authorizing Mozilla to remember your password if you don't want to type it every time.
Tweaking the account settings
- From the main Menu, choose Edit > Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings (or Tools > Account Settings if you are using Thunderbird).
- In the Composition & Addressing dialog, we suggest you uncheck the box labeled Compose messages in HTML format. Customize other settings to your taste.
- Very important if you are using IMAP:
Click on Sever Settings, then click on "Advanced..." Find "Maximum number of server connections to cache". This will probably be set at 5. Change the number to 3. Click OK.
- To create filters to sort incoming mail into a separate folders (or into the Trash) when it arrives, choose Tools > Message Filters..., click New and fill in the blanks.
- To experiment with Mozilla's powerful built-in spam controls, choose Tools > Junk Mail Controls...
That's it. You're done. Enjoy.
WWW.TRINIDADUSA.NET:
Serving Trinidad, Walsenburg, Aguilar, Cokedale, LaVeta, Gardner and most places in between!