Help and Support: Control Panel: Email

Through the Control Panel, you are able to set up email accounts, catchall addresses, and forwarders. These terms are defined below:

Email account - This is a space on the server that will collect and hold any email sent to you until you retrieve it. You can retrieve your email in one of three ways: via a POP server, IMAP server or over the web via Squirrel Mail.

In order to use POP or IMAP, you must have client software installed on your computer such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora. The email is then downloaded to your machine so that you can read it.

To set up your client software, you will need to know the following information:

Incoming/Outgoing Mail Server: This can be either your website URL, or
raincross-tech.com. It does not matter. Sometimes the incoming mail server is referred to as the POP3 server, or IMAP server. The outgoing server can be referred to as the SMTP server.

User Name: This is always your entire email address including the '@' sign. It will look something like this: something@yourwebsite.com

Password: This is the password you chose when creating your email account.

Encryption/SSL access: Normally each time you access your email, your username and password is transmitted in plain text over the internet, as well as the messages you get. The Raincross mail server accepts SSL access to encrypt these transmission for security. Most email clients have an checkbox to click if you wish to use this option. Use it if you wish.

Spam - The email server has a 3 tiered approach to reducing spam. This is designed to provide the best filtering possible while reducing the possibility of losing valid mail to 0.

1. Realtime DNS Blackhole LookupsThe Raincross email server attempts to distinquish if email comes from a known spam source. If it does, it will not be accepted for delivery to you. This process is reffered to as a DNS black hole lookup. We currently refer to the following services:
   • opm.blitzed.org
   • list.dsbl.org
   • sbl.spamhaus.org
   • blackhole.securitysage.com
   • dnsbl.ahbl.org
   • bl.csma.biz
   • dnsbl.antispam.or.id
   • Spamcop.net
   • cbl.abuseat.org
   • Sorbs.net
2. SMTP Content FilteringThis is a set of discrete rules that allow or disallow email to enter the system These rules are manually set by me, and is the first route to defend against large virus attacks and common spam templates.
3. Statistical Content Filtering Keeping manual filters up to date is impossible, so we rely on an automatic system to keep content filters up to date. This is done using a system called DSPAM.
   From the website:

   DSPAM is an adaptive filter which means it is capable of learning and adapting to each user's email. Instead of working off of a list of "rules" to identify spam, DSPAM's probabilistic engine examines the content of each message and learns what type of content the user deems as spam (or nonspam). This approach to machine-learning provides much higher levels of accuracy than commercial "hodge-podge" solutions, and with minimal resources.

   This system requires user intervention to keep things up to date. This new system actively tries to learn your email habits, but also shares a filter database with everyone else. If the filter thinks an incoming email is spam, it marks it with '***SPAM***' in the subject line.
   
   This is similar to how the older system worked. You can use your email program to automatically send these to the trash, or if you like send it to a junk mail folder of your choice which can be inspected periodically for mis marked email.
   
   As no spam filter is 100% accurate, I invite you all to help train the system by forwarding mis-marked email to one of the following addresses:
   
   For spam email that has not been marked as spam, forward it to:
   spam@raincross-tech.com
   
   For good email that has been incorrectly marked as spam, forward it to:
   ham@raincross-tech.com

In our experience our process eliminates 75-85% of the spam that is recieved by the server. Over 60% of the total email recieved every day by the server is rejected with this process, which is indicative of how much of a problem spam really is.

Squirrel Mail is a full featured web based email client. It includes an address book, spell checking and many more features. It's in my opinion the best web mail software available.

To use Squirrel Mail go to http://mail.raincross-tech.com and log in with your email account name and password. Remember your account name is your FULL email address including the domain name at the end. Squirrel Mail will allow you to read/send email from any internet connected computer. Unless you delete the email, you can then download it later using POP or IMAP. This is ideal if you are on a business trip or on vacation away from your usual computer.

Forwarder - This simply accepts mail for the specified address and immediately forwards it to another address. Use this if you have an existing account on AOL or Hotmail and wish to just continue using that account.

Catchall - A catchall account will accept mail for any address that is not specified already and forward it to another email address. For example, if your web site name is website.com and you have the following addresses setup:

webmaster@website.com
me@website.com
myfriend@website.com

without a catchall account, if someone sends an email to someone@website.com, it will get returned to them because that account doesn't exist. But, if you set up a catchall account that forwards to webmaster@website.com, it would get put into the webmaster account.

Mail Lists - A mail list is essentially a way for one email to take the place of many. It can be used to send out announcements, to have an group email conversation, and many more things. What this area on the web site is used for is to administer your list of addresses, and to change various options that affect how the mail list works.

Remember, a mail list can pile up a pretty big pile of email in someone's mailbox very quickly. A mail list is frighteningly close to spam, please be careful not to send email to people who haven't requested you to. If someone wants off the list, be sure and remove them as quickly as possible. I'm in the process of creating an automated method of removal, but until then, it's up to you to make this happen.

Monitoring: Raincross Technologies will monitor the use of your email accounts and mail lists. Though we do not read the content we track usage and any complaints that occur based on your usage of these features. Any indication of misuse including unsolicited email, spam, or any other use which Raincross deems inappropriate will result in immdiate account suspension.

List Address: This is the email address of the list. An email sent to this address will then be sent out to everyone on the list. This is the basis of everything, so the only way to change this is to delete the entire list, and create a new one. If you do not wish to lose your addresses, you may create both lists, and copy and paste the address list in-between them.

List Name: This is the name of the list. It can be anything, but keep in mind that the subject line of all email that goes through the list will start with the name of the list in brackets so don't make it too long. I recommend not more than 20 characters. (i.e. "[militiamen] some subject")

Reply Email Address: This is the address that will automatically receive any replies to your messages. You can do a couple things with this:

1. Put the address of the list. This will allow people to just hit 'Reply' and their message will get sent out on the list.
2. Put your email address. This would be best for an announcement only list, this way if people reply to the announcements, you will receive the reply.

Owner Email Address: This is your email address. Please put your personal address here. This is so that if you choose to only allow yourself to post to the list. Use the email address you will be posting from.

Mail list Members: This is the actual list of email addresses. You should type them in one address per line. Keep in mind if you want to receive a copy of what goes out on the list, you must put your email address in this too.

The web site checks each line to see if it's a valid email address in the for someone@somewhere.url. If an address is not a valid email address, it will skip it, and tell you which ones it skipped. The program will strip off everything but the base address, so often the leftover pieces will be shown. Don't worry unless you see an actual email address there.

I know many people will be converting from their personal lists that are just lists with each address separated by a comma. If this is what you have, just copy and paste it into the text box. The web site will convert it automatically to the line-by-line format.

When an email goes out on the list, each recipient gets a separate email addresses just to them. They will not see anyone else's email address.