Southern Star - Personal Mail Account Information

General

This is some general information about your personal mail account at Southern Star.

First you will need to get your mail setup info from your Postmaster.

Mail Address
SMTP (Outgoing) Server
POP3 (Incoming) Server
Mail Username
Mail Password

The Postmaster is the person responsible for mail and users at your domain. If you have any question or problems this is the best person to contact. Your Postmaster is postmaster@<domain>. For example, postmaster@idsno.net.

You can use POP3, IMAP4, Webmail or any combination of these.

If you have a problem doing the setup please contact either your Postmaster or Technical Support.

To test your mail account, send a message to Test. There should be a reply. If not, there is a problem.

In case you are curious, the mail server is CommuniGate Pro, running on FreeBSD, on a Dell 2550, located at Southern Star. For additional information, the mail server manual is available online.

Webmail Interface

Besides the standard POP3 and IMAP4 access, your account includes secure Webmail access. To use it point your web browser to https://mail.<domain>. For example, https://mail.idsno.net. Log in with your Mail Username and Password.

You will then be shown the Folders screen. The menu bar at the top and bottom allows you to select between the screens, including Folders, Compose, Rules, Settings, External, Web Site and Log Out.

Help is available for most screens by clicking on the "?" in the small box. It is usually found on the upper right. This will show you the relevant part of the manual. Some screens also have a "Display" button. Clicking it will update the information on that screen. It is usually found on the upper left.

The Folders screen displays the status of each of your folders and allows you to create new ones. The system automatically creates the InBox folder for you. You can select a folder by clicking on it. The screen will then change to show you an index of the individual messages in that particular folder.

The system will also automatically create the Sent and Trash folders when you create and delete messages, respectively. Please note that deleting a message actually sends it to the Trash folder. To get rid of the message entirely and recover the space it used you will need to use the "Empty Trash" button or delete the message from the Trash folder itself.

After you select a folder you can click on a message to read it. You can also delete, copy, move, redirect or forward messages. If you have a lot of messages, you can Search them for a keyword or you can Filter the display to show just those you want to see.

The Folder Management option allows to you rename the folder or delete it. You can also set up an Access Control List to give others on the system the ability to use your folder.

The New screens allow you to create New Mail messages (with attachments) and send them, New Events, New Tasks and New Notes. Warning! The server will log you out after 15 minutes of inactivity. Do not take longer than this to compose a message or it will be lost.

The Rules screen let you set up Automated Processing rules. It comes with two predefined rules which are commonly used - Vacation Message and Redirect All Mail. If you define your own rules be sure to test them carefully.

The Settings screen contains 9 sub-screens: General, Compose, Calendar, Contacts, Folders, Password, RPOP, Public Info and Secure Mail. We recommend that you visit each of these screens and adjust the settings as you desire. Note that the Password sub-screen allows you to change your password. You can also set up an address to have the password mailed to you should you forget it. We suggest that you do this now, while you can.

The Web Site screen is for setting up a personal web site. We don't recommend using this feature as we have a better method for setting these up. Contact us for more info.

The Log Out screen exits the system.

Spam

The mail server front-end blocks about 90% of the incoming spam. This is done by various SMTP, DNS, Return Path, SPF and Relay tests along with the use of multiple Realtime Blackhole Lists while receiving messages. Any message blocked is returned to the sender with an explanation about why it was blocked. This lets the sender know when there is a problem. The false positive rate is about 0.002%.

The remaining messages are then scored as to likely spam content. This pass identifies most of the remaining spam (about 97%) but it is more prone to errors (about 0.2%). Thus the mail server does not automatically delete these messages, but marks them for you to review and decide. Overall, taking both passes into account, about 99.7% of the spam is detected with a false positive rate of about 0.2%.

The message's spam score is stored in some header control lines which are placed in the message. For example:

X-Spam-Status: SS 92.34 / 70.00
X-Spam-Level: SS #####

Each message is assigned a score between 0.00 and 100.00. The higher the score (92.34 in the above example), the more likely it is spam. Ignore the "/ 70.00" at the end of this line. The other line a bar graph made up of #'s. As the numeric score gets higher the number of #'s increases. This makes it easy to construct a "rule" on your system to identify the spam messages of a certain score or higher. The relationship is:

Score	#'s
0.00 - 69.99	(none)
70.00 - 74.99	#
75.00 - 79.99	##
80.00 - 84.99	###
85.00 - 89.99	####
90.00 - 94.99	#####
95.00 - 98.99	######
99.00 - 99.99	#######
100.00	########

Most messages score between 0.00 and 69.99. These are most likely normal messages, not spam. Messages scoring 90.00 and above are most likely spam. The ones between 70.00 and 89.99 could be either normal messages or spam. You can use this score to move the suspect spam messages to another folder. This will allow you to review them before deleting them. If there are any false positives you will be able to catch them this way.

We recommend using a score of 85.00. If you use a lower score you will have fewer false negatives (missed spam) but more false positives (falsely identified spam). Likewise, a higher score will result in more false negatives but fewer false positives.

One method is to set up a rule in your mail program to look for messages with control lines containing "X-Spam-Level: SS ####" and move them to a special "spam" folder. This will allow you to review them before deleting them. If there are any false positives you will be able to catch them this way. Most mail programs support such rules.

Here is an example using Microsoft Outlook, version 6. First create a mail folder named "Spam". Then create a rule according to these steps:

Click on "Tools" menu, then select "Rules Wizard"
Click "New"
Select "Start from a blank rule"
Select "Check messages when they arrive"
Click "Next"
Select "with specific words in the message header"
Click on "specific words"
Enter "X-Spam-Level: SS ####" (without the quotes), then click "Add"
Click "OK"
Click "Next"
Select "move it to the specified folder"
Click on "specified"
Select "Spam", then click "OK"
Click "Next"
Click "Next"
Enter a name for the rule
Click "Finish"
Click "OK"

Another method is to set up a rule in your account on the mail server by using the Webmail interface. To do this, log into the Webmail interface. First create a mail folder named "Spam" (without the quotes). Then create a rule according to these steps:

Click on "Rules" menu
Enter "Spam" (without the quotes) then click AddRule
Next to the Spam rule click Edit
Select Data "Header Field"
Select Operation "is"
Enter Parameter "X-Spam-Level: SS ####*" (without the quotes)
Select Action "Store in"
Enter Parameter "Spam"
Select Action "Discard"
Click "Update"

You can then use the Webmail interface to review the messages in the Spam folder before deleting them. Note: The name of the folder used to hold the spam, "Spam" in this example, is case sensitive. Also, after deleting the spam messages remember to "Empty Trash" to reclaim the space. Or you can set up another POP3 or IMAP4 account on your computer to poll the Spam folder.

Regardless of the method you choose, you can adjust the number of #'s in the rule to suit your taste. If you use 4 #'s, for example, you will catch messages which score 85.00 or above. Using 5 #'s would catch messages scoring 90.00 or above.

The scoring criteria is updated hourly. You can affect this by sending false negative messages to spam-cloudmark@messagepartners.com and false positive messages to ham-cloudmark@messagepartners.com. Send the complete messages as attachments, not as in-line text.

To do this using Microsoft Outlook, for example, first create a new message. Then drag the message(s) which you are submitting onto the new message window to attach them. Finally, send the new message, which now contains the attachments.

Notes

The POP3 and IMAP4 Server Username and Password are both case sensitive.
Some mail programs (ex: Netscape, Eudora) will not allow an "@" in the POP3 Server Username. In this case substitute a "%" for the "@".
Roaming: If your connection to the Internet is via an ISP other than Southern Star and you use POP3 you will need to make some additional settings. First, verify that the SMTP (Outgoing) Server is the same as the POP3 (Incoming) Server. Previously you might have been advised to set the name of the SMTP (Outgoing) Server to the other ISP's mail sever. This will not work in all cases. Instead, set the name of the SMTP (Outgoing) Server to match the name of the POP3 (Incoming) Server.
Second, enable SMTP (Outgoing) Server Authentication. Sometimes this shows up as "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication". Click the option to use the same settings (username and password) as for the POP3 (Incoming) Mail Server. Note: Do not use SPA (Secure Password Authentication). This is something different and it will not work.
Finally, use SMTP (Outgoing) Server Port 587 instead of SMTP (Outgoing) Server Port 25.
You will find these settings in your mail program along with the other settings or preferences for your mail account. Look for the "SMTP (Outgoing) Server Settings" page then look for a "More Settings" or "Advanced Settings" option. Depending on your computer, you might need to exit the mail program, logoff the user account or even reboot before these changes will be effective.
Note: The Eudora mail program sometimes mistakenly refers to Authentication as Authorization. It also sometimes mistakenly refers to Port 587 as Port 578 or 597.
POP3 polls the standard "InBox" folder by default. If you have set up additional folders by using the Webmail interface you can poll them by setting up additional POP3 accounts on your computer. Set them up the same way that you did the standard folder, except preface the Mail Username with the name of the folder followed by the "#" symbol. Example: For the "Sent" folder, the Mail Username would be Sent#john.doe@<domain>.
Remember that this username is case sensitive. Anyone can also send mail directly to these folders by using the regular mail name followed by the "+" symbol then the name of the folder. Example: For the "Sent" folder, the message address would be john.doe+sent@<domain>.
If you set your system to automatically pick up new mail, please use a setting of at least 5 minutes.
If you have trouble connecting to the secure web site, you can use the non-secure web site at http://mail.<domain>. For example, http://mail.idsno.net.
If you are using the Webmail interface from behind a proxy server (ex: AOL users) it might be necessary to set "Require Fixed Network Address" to "No". You will find this setting on the Settings screen, near the top. If you are unable to connect to make this change yourself ask your Postmaster to do it for you.
Your account quota is 100M by default. You will receive a warning message if your account is over 90M. If you need more space, contact your Postmaster.
Your account quota is 50 folders by default. If you need more, contact your Postmaster.
Mail accounts which are inactive for over 60 days may be deleted.