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From Internet Services Director Updates on CPCUG's Internet Services Reset Your Free E-Mail | Forwarding E-Mail As the New Year 2008 began our email hosting service failed outright, and we are still dealing with fallout. The CPCUG volunteer Support Team can again be reached at support@cpcug.org as usual, but please see the following articles below for more. Our hosting service has started to address some long overdue technical repairs to our server configurations, which is good news. The best news is that the anti-SPAM tools on our server have been restarted, which should reduce the amount of junk that gets into your inbox. It goes into your SPAM folder instead, which you can check via Webmail. As of January 8, the service is largely operating again with one major change: the old email server name, cpcug.cpcug.org, is no longer viable. Use either mail.cpcug.org or www.cpcug.org instead. Whichever you choose, the same server name works for all uses your desktop software might need: for POP3 and IMAP getting of your email and for SMTP sending of your email. Moreover, if you use mail.cpcug.org you can also opt to add SSL-based security, since that server name matches our SSL email server certificate. CPCUG Support recommends SSL, as it reduces your risk. If you do not want or need that security, you can alternatively use www.cpcug.org for getting and sending your member email "in the clear." For information on resetting your email software, see Tutorials on Setting Up Your Email Account . You do not need to create a new account, just change your downloading software's email server names for your @cpcug.org account if they are not already set to mail.cpcug.org or the less secure, www.cpcug.org. If in future, you cannot reach support@cpcug.org or view this website, you should check cpcug.net (Beta Site) for the Latest News on CPCUG internet services developments. For 2008, CPCUG is offering members an optional extra layer of Anti-Spam technology that you can add to your email account. In addition to the Anti-Spam tool SpamAssassin, users that want only messages that also pass one or more blacklists (of known spammers and suspect email originators) can select from several, each maintained by third parties on the web. So far as CPCUG knows there is no way using these lists can compromise your account, so long as you check for false positives as described in the next paragraph. If you want to add one or more blacklists, login to your account with Webmail, and make a new folder such as "MySpam." To do that, click on the Folders link above the main panel, then enter MySpam into the top edit box, the subpanel labeled "Create Folder" and click the [Create] button when you're done. Next click on the Options link above, then click the Spam Filtering link in the lower right, and then click the Edit link. Now you indicate where you want the suspect messages to go via the dropdown list; CPCUG suggests you select MySpam (or whatever you named the new folder). You could send them straight to Inbox.Trash if you did not want to review the diversions for good messages incorrectly identifed as spam. You next choose whether to check all or only unread messages; CPCUG suggests you limit the scan to "unread messages" via that dropdown list. Finally select which of the blacklists you want to use. Check each of the lists you want the scanner to use by clicking in the associated boxes; you can click on the links associated with each to visit their webpages. When you are done, do not forget to click on the [Save] button at the bottom of this page. After your extra scanning has been running for a few days, you can look in your MySpam folder via Webmail to see what the blacklists are diverting. You clear this folder the same way you clear your Spam folder, as described below. As of January 8, 2008, we have also implemented an automatic purge of your trash folder for items that have been there over 40 days. This is critical to us, to control the amount of junk eating up our online storage. Please remember to empty your trash when you use Webmail, where it is called "purge." Just click on the black link to the right of your Inbox.Trash folder listed on the left of the Webmail display page. While you're there, why not clear your SPAM folder too: click on the SPAM folder on the left, then after the display repaints click on the Show All link, then click on the Toggle All link, and finally click on the [Delete] button to the right. After that you should see a message that your SPAM folder is empty. Finally, you'll need to empty your trash as described in the prior paragraph. In early November, 2007, each CPCUG member was "snail" mailed a general description of planned changes to the CPCUG hosting, more of which is described below. As of November, 2007, no date has been set for changes. As the snail mail notice said, members will be advised in advance by their member email. Because of our current Host is not providing the responsiveness CPCUG deserves for the high fee we pay, in October, 2007, the CPCUG Board approved a plan to shift our email services as soon as we can do so in good order. Each member will receive advance warning and specifics as soon as we have finished testing the new Host's email services. We will include a transition plan, so that none of the membership email (@cpcug.org) should be compromised or lost. Before the new year, you should check your member account @cpcug.org : Meanwhile, we now regularly purge each member's email SPAM folder to delete email that has been in that folder for over 40 days; but its effect may not be apparent until mid December, 2007. We are planning the same purge for your member email inbox.trash (not the inbox itself, your trash) so you should autoforward that @cpcug.org email or visit online every month or so. We look forward to the return of meaningful SpamAssassin diversion on all incoming mail. [Wed., Oct. 24, 2007, Leros has fixed issues with e-mail member account size quotas that was blocking some members accounts. However it has not fixed SpamAssassin, which behaves as if it has been turned off. [October 17, 2007] Our current internet host, Leros (formerly known as Patriot.Net / Iceweb), does regular maintenance on Sunday morning during the 1:00 to 4:00 AM interval. New installations are expected during this time. No e-mail will be lost, but mail will be temporarily unavailable when maintenance is underway. [Mon., Oct. 15, 2007,] Leros Technologies Corporation (buyer of PatriotNet), the provider of the dedicated server supporting cpcug.org Web pages and e-mail accounts, experienced difficulties following recent upgrades. As a result, the cpcug.org Web site and e-mail accounts were only available for a few hours at a time from Wednesday, October 10, to Friday, October 12. Several issues remain to be resolved, including e-mail account size quotas and the nearly total loss in usefulness of the SpamAssassin installation. Moreover, some Web pages on cpcug.org have links to pages on cpcug.net, which is hosted by Web.com (buyer of Interland). Database functionality has been lost on many of these pages, and we've requested a restore. Since the host change in mid-September 2006, the login to your free e-mail account changed from the whole e-mail address to just the username (i.e., just the text before the @-sign). Your password was not changed. Other details are set out below. Our current host can take up to 120 seconds to assign a new user a system ID, so an error message may appear the first time they access folders in CPCUG's webmail (aka SquirrelMail). The same may also occur if your first encounter with the new host is a download to desktop e-mail software. This should be a one-time issue. If the error occurs again a few minutes later, please contact support@cpcug.org or — if you don't have an alternate e-mail address — call the CPCUG Office at the new number: (301) 560-6442 and mention the error message. Free e-mail users can forward CPCUG e-mail to another address in webmail: after logging into your account, click the Options link at the top of the SquirrelMail screen and then the Vacation Message option (column 1, fourth entry). (The webmail link is on the top right of this page and our home page.) Then scroll past the auto-reply options down to the forwarding options: "Forward incoming.." will copy messages to addresses you list and keep the original on the cpcug.org server. The "No local delivery.." option sends off the original e-mail without storing it or tagging it when it looks like SPAM. Only if you use the first option will SpamAssassin send originals of probable SPAM to your SPAM folder, as described below, but all copies sent on will include that SPAM without tagging. You therefore have to manage the SPAM at each other address. Since Sept. 25, 2006, some of your SPAM is routinely diverted. CPCUG uses SpamAssassin to identify junk e-mail, and the worst of it is going to a separate folder in your e-mail account labeled "SPAM". The easiest way to check for mis-identified SPAM is to use webmail: use the link in the upper right of this page (see below for more information). Automatic deletion occurs after 40 days, and is important so that your mail box does not clog up with junk. It is probably a good idea to check the contents of your SPAM folder in Webmail periodically for e-mail that you actually may want, whether you manage your email online or download it to your desktop. If you find a keeper, just move it to another folder. When you are done checking, if you are using CPCUG webmail (aka SquirrelMail) stay in the SPAM folder, click Toggle All and then click Delete to empty the SPAM folder— that way it will not count against the yet-to-be-implemented mail quotas. If instead you download your e-mail, there are alternatives to manage this SPAM folder: you can carry on without changing anything and use webmail when you want to check the "SPAM" folder, OR you can reconfigure your e-mail software to use IMAP, and you will see the SPAM folder on your desktop. (You cannot access your SPAM folder using the POP protocol.) Addresses of CPCUG's POP, IMAP, and SMTP servers are unchanged: www.cpcug.org. Mail.cpcug.org no longer works, though it did with the old host. Our Security Certificate is for www.cpcug.org from Thwate Consulting in South Africa, if you want to confirm it. So turn SSL on in your e-mail software on your desktop, if you previously turned it off. On Wednesday, September 13, 2006, CPCUG contracted with Leros of Herndon, Virginia, to provide a dedicated semimanaged server for cpcug.org Web pages and member e-mail. Major thanks to Dennis Courtney, Barbara Conn and Robert Clemenzi for their efforts to prevent this emergency, and to Dennis and PatriotNet for the rapid restart. This crisis was caused when a few days earlier CPCUG's prior Host notified us that our e-mail server was somehow being used to send massive amounts of spam. To track down the offending spammer, we agreed to shut down our webmail interface for a 24-hour period. Notwithstanding CPCUG's best efforts to find the problem, the host chose to terminate CPCUG's account without any serious attempt to remedy the problem or to permit CPCUG's Webteam to investigate. |
Member Benefits
About Dialup and Winter 2006 ISD Advisories
CPCUG Letter to Members
Millkern E-Mail to CPCUG.ORG Subscribers
Millkern Report to ISD, January 3, 2006
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