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Email

What types of email accounts are available and how can they be setup? #

The following types of email accounts can be created and maintained using your control panel:
- POP & IMAP Email Account (Mailbox)
- Email Redirect (Forward)
- Email Alias
- Mail Group
- Email Autoresponder
For more information, please see Plesk’s documentation.
What are POP and IMAP email accounts and how can you create them? #

POP & IMAP email accounts store email on the server in a mailbox. You can download your email using from the server using a POP enabled email program or read your email directly on the server using a IMAP enabled email program or our webmail feature.

To create an email account, do the following:
1. log in to your control panel
2. select the domain name for the email account you want to create
3. select “Mail”
4. select “Add New Mail Account”
5. enter desired mail name
6. enter the desired password and confirm the password, then select “OK”
For more help, view the POP Email Account Tutorial

Here are instructions on how to change the password for an email account.

NOTE: To change the name of your email account, log in to your control panel, select the domain, select “Mail”, go to the “Preferences” page, enter the new mail name and then select “OK”.

NOTE: If you want to switch from a POP/IMAP mailbox to a redirect, log in to your control panel, select the domain, select “Mail”, select the email account, go to the mailbox page and uncheck mailbox. Next go to the redirect page, check redirect and enter the email address where you want your email forwarded.

NOTE: If you want to switch from a redirect to a POP/IMAP mailbox, log in to your control panel, select the domain, select “Mail”, select the email account, go to the redirect page and uncheck redirect. Next go to the mailbox page, check mailbox and enter a password for the mailbox (please see our advice on how to create a good password). At this point you should decide if you want to enable spam filtering for the mailbox.

NOTE: It is not a good idea to have an email account setup as both a POP/IMAP mailbox and redirect. If you do this, you may risk exceeding your mailbox quota if you do not periodically download or clear out the email from your mailbox.
How do you change the password for an email account? #

To change the password for an email account, do the following:
1. log in to your control panel
2. select the domain name for the email account you want modify
3. select “Mail”
4. select the email account you want to modify
5. go to the “Preferences” page, enter the new password and confirm the new password, then select “OK”
Please see our recommendation on how to create a good password.
How do you configure an email program for a POP email account? #

For your incoming server use:

server name: yourdomain.com
server type: POP3 server
username: your-username
password: your-password

For your outgoing server use your ISP’s SMTP settings. Your ISP is the company that you use to connect to the internet. While it may be possible to use Laughing Squid’s SMTP mailserver, the practice could be disallowed by your ISP.

To help you with the POP settings for your email program, we have created some screen shot examples of the POP email setup for some popular email programs.

To help you setup an email program so that it displays a domain-specific email address, we have created some screen shot examples of the email identity setup for some popular email programs.
How do you access an email account with a web browser using webmail? #

You can use the following url to access your mailbox using a web browser via the IMP webmail interface:

http://webmail.yourdomain.com/ (replace “yourdomain.com/” with your actual domain name).

To login to your email account, use your full email address (you@yourdomain.com and the password for your mailbox.

You can also access webmail through your control panel.

View the Webmail Tutorial

NOTE: IMP Webmail is really useful if you need to access your email while traveling, or if you are temporarily away from your home or work computer, but it should not be considered a replacement for a standard email program that downloads email to your computer. Among other drawbacks, using webmail as your full-time email program puts you at risk for exceeding your email storage quota, which would cause your incoming email to bounce. If you are looking for a full-time webmail solution, you might consider redirecting your email to Gmail and then configuring Gmail to display your email address when you reply to email. Gmail provides over 5 GB of free email storage and includes filtering for regular email and spam.

NOTE: IMP Webmail uses IMAP which accesses your email directly in your mailbox instead of downloading it as POP email. Therefore it is really important that you occasionally download or delete email that is being stored in your mailbox as well as delete old sent email from your “sent-mail” folder or else your mailbox will fill up. If the total storage space used on of all of the mailboxes associated with your domain exceeds the email storage quota that is associated with your hosting plan, then any new email sent to your domain’s email accounts will bounce until you free up some space by deleting/downloading old mail (including deleting sent mail).

NOTE: IMP Webmail can only be used to read email that is stored on the server in your mailbox, not email that is redirected to another address. If you want to use webmail for an email account that is currently setup as a redirect, you will need to convert it to a mailbox.

NOTE: IMP Webmail is not as full-featured as a stand-alone email program, so if you have problems using IMP Webmail or do not like how it works, you might want to consider using a standard email program to download your email. Please refer to the help screens that are integrated into IMP for more information on how to use the program. You may want to check out the IMP section of the Horde website for more information.

NOTE: IMP Webmail is not available with subdomains, i.e. name.yourdomain.com.

NOTE: IMP Webmail has an email filter feature can be used in conjunction with SpamAssassin to filter spam. It also has a blacklist feature for filtering selected email and a whitelist feature for preventing selected email from being filtered.
What is an email redirect (forward) and how do you create one? #

An email redirect (forward) is an email account that forwards email from the server to another email address, either on the same server or an outside server.

To create an email redirect, do the following: If you are wanting to switch an existing redirect to a mailbox or a mailbox to a redirect, go here
1. log in to your control panel
2. select the domain name for the email redirect you want to create
3. select “Mail”
4. select “Add New Mail Account”
5. enter desired mail name
6. skip the password fields, they are not needed for redirects
7. uncheck the “Mailbox” checkbox
8. select “OK”. You will see this warning message: “The messages addressed to mail@yourdomain.com will not be delivered…” Disregard this message and continue on.
9. from the Tools menu of icons select “Redirect”
10. put a check in the “Redirect” checkbox
11. enter the email address you want to redirect to, then select “OK”
For more help, view the Email Redirect (Forward) Tutorial

NOTE: If you want to switch from a POP/IMAP mailbox to a redirect, log in to your control panel, select the domain, select “Mail”, select the email account, go to the mailbox page and uncheck mailbox. Next go to the redirect page, check redirect and enter the email address where you want your email forwarded.

NOTE: If you want to switch from a redirect to a POP/IMAP mailbox, log in to your control panel, select the domain, select “Mail”, select the email account, go to the redirect page and uncheck redirect. Next go to the mailbox page, check mailbox and enter a password for the mailbox (please see our advice on how to create a good password). At this point you should decide if you want to enable spam filtering for the mailbox.

NOTE: It is not a good idea to have an email account setup as both a POP/IMAP mailbox and redirect. If you do this, you may risk exceeding your mailbox quota if you do not periodically download or clear out the email from your mailbox.
What is an email alias and how do you create one? #

An email alias is an additional email address that is associated with an existing mailbox.

To create an email alias, do the following:
1. log in to your control panel
2. select the domain name for the email alias you want to create
3. select “Mail”
4. select the email account you want to create the alias for
5. from the Tools menu of icons select “Add New Mail Alias”
6. enter the desired mail alias, then select “OK”
For more help, view the Email Alias Tutorial
What is an email mailgroup and how do you create one? #

A mail group is an email account that redirects to multiple email addresses. It is not an email list and should never be used in place of a real email list which is a service that we do not provide. If you want to setup an email list, here are some options.

To create a mail group, do the following:
1. log in to your control panel
2. select the domain name for the mail group you want to create
3. select “Mail”
4. select the email account you want to create the mail group for
5. from the Tools menu of icons select “Mail Group”
6. from the Tools menu of icons select “Add New Member”
7. enter the email address to be included in the mail group, then select “OK”
8. from the Tools menu of icons select “Enable”
What is an email autoresponder and how is it configured? #

An email autoresponder sends out a automated response when an email is sent to the email account it is associated with.

View the Mail Autoresponder Tutorial

NOTE: Autoresponders normally send out a reply each time an email is sent to them. If you would like to configure the autoresponder to behave like a vacation reply, you’ll need to set the “Reply to the unique e-mail address not more than” to one day (the default setting is 10 days). This is important, because if you send out a response to every email you receive, you might find yourself removed from mailing lists for excessive posting, as well as sending a bunch of repetitive email responses to your friends.

NOTE: If you create an autoresponder it has to be associated with either a mailbox or a redirect. If a delivery method is not defined for an autoresponder, then it will create a mail loop and could decrease the performance of the mailserver. Therefore any autoresponders that do not have mail delivery defined will be deleted.

NOTE: DO NOT set “Forward request to e-mail” to the same email address that is using the autoresponder. If you do then every time an email is sent to the autoresponder address, an autoresponder will be sent out to that address as well. This will create an infinite loop situation and you will quickly max out your email storage quota resulting in your email being bounced back to the sender. Setting up an autoresponder does not change how email is delivered to an address, only what is sent back to the sender. If you use “Forward request to e-mail”, make sure that it is a different address than the one that has the autoresponder.
Can I setup a catch-all email account? #

We do not allow catch-all accounts on our servers due to huge increase of spam caused by dictionary attacks and bounces from virus spam. In addition to that, catch-all accounts can cause our servers to be blocked by ISP’ and web hosts, as well as cause performance issues with our mail servers. If you currently do not have any email accounts created for your domain you will then need to create individual email accounts for any email addresses you intend to use.

With the catch-all turned off, any email sent to an undefined email addresses on the server will automatically be rejected and send a bounce back to the sender with the following error message:

Status: 5.0.0 550_sorry,_no_mailbox_here_by_that_name._(#5.7.17)

By default all “Mail to nonexistent user” will be setup as a reject.
Do you recommend any email programs? #

Windows
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Microsoft Outlook
Mac
- Apple Mail
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Microsoft Entourage
Is there a SMTP mailserver that can be used to send out email through the server? #

In general, you should always user your ISP’s SMTP mailserver for outgoing email. You can usually find this information in the support section of your ISP’s website or on the setup email they sent you when you signed-up for their service.

If for some reason you do not have an SMTP mailserver, it may be possible to relay email through our mailserver using SMTP Authentication. To do this you’ll need to configure your email program settings to enable authentication and you will need to supply the same username and password that you use with your email account for incoming email. Use your domain name as your outgoing SMTP mailserver (i.e. yourdomain.com).

NOTE: Not all email programs support SMTP Authentication. Also, many ISP’s do not allow any relaying at all except through their own SMTP mailserver. This is known as Port 25 Blocking and it is used by ISP’s to prevent spamming through open relays. For example, EarthLink/Mindspring has a Port 25 Blocking policy (link to Earthlink SMTP support docs). We have also had reports from customers that they are unable to use SMTP Authentication with Verizon’s network.

NOTE: Always try using your ISP’s SMTP mailserver first, before trying to relay through our server. Because of these issues, we are not able to provide any kind of tech support for our SMTP service. If you can get it to work with your email program and ISP, great; if not, you may have to investigate other options. In most cases you should be able to use your ISP’s outgoing mailserver to send out your email, and this should not prevent you from displaying your domain-specific email address on your outgoing email.

NOTE: If you ISP does block access to SMTP over port 25 then you can use port 587 as an alternate port to relay email through our mailserver. You will need to configure your email client to use port 587 and SMTP Authentication.

NOTE: DO NOT, under any circumstances, send out mass mailings using our SMTP or use our SMTP service to send out a mailing list. That is a direct violation of our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) (see #2) and could lead to the suspension of you web hosting account. If you want to run a mailing list, here are some suggestions.
What can be done when a mailbox goes over its quota and email starts bouncing? #

Once you have exceeded the email quota for a mailbox, it will stop accepting any new email and any additional email sent to that email addres will bounce back to the sender. To solve this problem you’ll need to free up some space by downloading or deleting email from the server.

If you are using an email program to download from a POP email account, then just deselect the “leave mail on server” option, so that your email will be permanently downloaded to your computer.

If you are using IMAP or webmail you’ll need to actually delete some of your mail from the server (your trash and sent email are a good place to start). When deleting email using IMP Webmail, make sure to select the “purge deleted” option in order to permanently remove your deleted email from the server.

If you are ever unsure of how much email storage space is assigned to your website or you want to find out how much of that space you are actually using, you can check your email quota and current usage using your control panel.

If you need more email storage space, you might want to consider upgrading to a larger web hosting plan. This may be necessary if several people use email on the same domain or if you use IMP Webmail often and rarely download your email to your computer.

NOTE: Another possible cause for excess email collecting on the server, which could cause you to exceed you email quota, is if you have an email account setup as both a POP email account and a redirect. You should choose one or the other. If you really only want a redirect, then you should disable the POP mailbox. See our email account setup notes for more info.
How do you check the mailbox quota for a domain and actual email usage? #

You can check a domain’s email quota and usage using your control panel.
1. log in to your control panel
2. select the domain for the email account you want check
3. select “Report”
4. From the drop-down box, select “Full report”
5. click “Mail accounts” from the menu of links directly below the drop-down box
View the Quotas, Usage and Statistics Tutorial

NOTE: The email usage report is only run once per day, so the usage amounts that are listed are not in real-time. Any changes to these values will show up when the report is run for the next day.
Is there a size limit on incoming email? #

For security and performance reasons, 10MB is the maximum size email that will be accepted by our mailserver.

A better way for someone to deliver large files to you is via FTP. For security reasons you should not give out your main FTP account info, instead you can setup a web user account and give out the web user FTP info only to those who need to deliver files to you. Another option is to have the sender upload the files to a server where they have access, and then give you a url for downloading the files.

Another option would be to use third party file transfer services like YouSendIt, DropSend, Zapr, File Dropper or Drop.io.
Do you offer any kind of mailing list services? #

We do not offer any kind of mailing list services. Here are a few things to consider if you are planning on setting up a mailing list:
1. We do not allow the installation of any mailing lists scripts or mailing lists that are generated from a database. There are serveral reasons for this including the possible negative impact on our server’s performance and potential for spam related issues. In general we do not allow any form of mass mailing from our servers or any other kind of high-volume mailing activities
2. Consider hosting your email lists at an offsite mailing list service or on a private server.There are several other organizations that do email list outsourcing as well, including Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, Topica, BIGLIST, Your Mailinglist Provider, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor and MailerMailer. Some of these services will setup a subdomain (i.e. lists.yourdomain.com) for you and provide you with a DNS entry for our nameserver.For small annoucement-only email lists, check out NotifyList.com. The provide free one-way email lists with subscription confirmation and they have a very strict anti-spam policy similar to our own.Many of these services have fairly advanced list functionality including digest options and custom headers & footers etc. Often they will provide you with code that you can add to your website so people can subscribe/unsubscribe themselves.
3. Some ISP’s offer email list services. Check with your ISP and see if they offer that kind of service.
4. DO NOT use the mailgroup feature for a full-blown email list. Mail groups should only be used to redirect to a few email addresses.
5. DO NOT use our SMTP service to send out mailing lists or any other kind of mass mailing.
Do you recommend any Firewall and Anti-Virus programs? #

Yes, Windows users should check out F-Secure, Zone Alarm or BullGard. Also, it is very important to keep these programs and anti-virus definitions up-to-date. Most Firewall and Anti-Virus programs do this through an online subscription service.

If you are running Apple Mac OS X, then you are immune to any viruses that are currently out there. That said, there is always the possibility that there will eventually be a virus that is written for Apple Mac OS X, but it has yet to happen. Regardless, make sure to turn on Mac OS X’s built-in firewall.
How do you configure and use SpamAssassin to filter spam? #

SpamAssassin is an open-source program that identifies email as potential spam by using a ranking system. It then tags the subject line with *****SPAM***** which makes it easier for you to filter spam using your email program or webmail.

SpamAssassin 3.0 is enabled server-wide on all of our servers and can also be customized for each email account.

SpamAssassin will only work for mailboxes that you have setup on the server, not for an email redirect that forwards to an outside email address.

There are individual SpamAssassin settings for each mailbox. In the “Mail” page of the control panel, just select the email account you want to modify, then select the “Spam Filter” option. Here you can do things like adjust the thresholds for marking email as spam, change the tag that is added to the subject line, and “train” SpamAssassin with email that is still on the server. If you really want to, you can have the spam automatically deleted as it reaches the server, but be careful with this option, since there is always the risk that valid email could be misidentified as spam.

If you want to enable or disable SpamAssassin for an individual email account, you can do it through the “Mailbox” page for that email account.

View the SpamAssassin Tutorial

For more information, please see Plesk’s documentation.
What can be done to reduce the amount of spam that is sent to and email account? #

All of our servers filter email against the Spamhaus Block List (SBL) and Spamhaus Exploits Block List (XBL). Spamhaus focuses on blocking professional spammers and spam gangs, which according to Spamhaus, are responsible for around 80% of the spam on the internet. This will filter a large quantly of the spam that our servers receive before it even reaches your mailbox. For more info, please see the Spamhaus SBL FAQ.

Spamhaus will not block all spam that you receive, so here are some addtional steps you can take to reduce or eliminate spam:
- SpamAssassin
  
  If you have SpamAssassin enabled for your email account, then you can use the email filter feature that is built into your email program or webmail to filter or delete any email that is identified as spam by SpamAssassin.
  
  Some email programs, such as Mozilla Thunderbird (Windows and Mac) and Apple’s Mail (Mac), have a very good built-in anti-spam feature that you can train to identify and filter spam. There are also many shareware applications available that will process all of your email first then tag any potential spam. At Download.com (and other sites) you can find spam filtering programs for both Windows and Mac.
  
  You can use SpamAssassin in combination with an email program’s spam filter to really take a bite out of spam.
  
  The advantage to filtering to a separate spam/junk mail folder, rather than just deleting email identified as spam, is that that way you can deal with the filtered email when you have time to and if your spam filter misidentified something as spam (i.e. a false positive), you will not lose potentially valid email.
- don’t use a mailto tag to display your email addresses
  
  If you link to the email addresses on your website using a mailto tag, then there’s a good chance that a spambot will find your email address and start spamming it. Alternate display methods include using a contact form script, munging or obfuscating you email address, displaying your email address as an image or using JavaScript to create a mailto link. For more info, check out the great write-up on “How to avoid spam” at Rick’s Spam Digest.
- external spam blocking services
  
  If you are really sick of spam and filtering just doesn’t do the trick, there are several services that will filter your email based on white lists and challenge-response techniques. A few of the services that some of our customers use are Spam Arrest and MailFrontier. These services are subscription based, but are worth it to some people who are overwhelmed by spam and just want to be rid of it, even if it means that it may be a little harder for people to get ahold of them.
In addition to all of the tactics listed here, check out Richard Conner’s excellent “Spam Rules” (Rick’s Spam Digest) article which lists things you can do to reduce amount of spam you recieve.
How can you stop virus spam from spoofing an email address? #

There really isn’t anything that you or Laughing Squid can do to stop someone from spoofing your email address when sending out spam. Unfortunately we are seeing more and more of this kind of thing lately, especially with spam viruses like Klez, Sobig, MyDoom, Bagle, Netsky, Sasser, etc. and their variants. The good news is that none of this spam is being generated from your website or any of our Laughing Squid servers.

We have never seen any of our customers become blacklisted as a result of this kind of spoofed email. Luckily most anti-spam organizations read the header info of the spam emails that they process and they can easily see were an email is actually being sent from. In your case they will be able to tell that the spam is not being sent from our server, therefore there is no reason to block your domain.

The best thing to do with these spam viruses is to just delete them. If you are running Windows, especially if you are using Outlook or Outlook Express on Windows, make sure that you are running an Anti-Virus program and that you are keeping your virus definitions up-to-date. If you are running Apple Mac OS X, then you are immune to any viruses that are currently out there. That said, there is always the possibility that there will eventually be a virus that is written for Apple Mac OS X, but it has yet to happen.

For up-to-date information on the various email viruses and worms that are currently making the rounds, as well as sources for anti-virus programs and removal tools, check out the F-Secure Security Information Center.
What causes the connection to occasionally time out when using Outlook/Outlook Express, preventing email from being downloaded from the server? #

We see this problem come up from sometimes with customers who are trying to download their email using Microsoft’s Outlook or Outlook Express on Windows, specifically when they are using Symantec’s Norton Anti-Virus to filter their email. Here are some of the Outlook download errors your might see when the problem occurs:

Task ’server name - Sending and Receiving’ reported error (0×800ccc0f): ‘The connection to the server was interrupted. If this problem continues, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). The server responded: ? K’

Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. Account. account name, Server: ’server name’, Protocol: POP3, Server Response: ‘+OK’, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): N0, Error Number: 0×800ccc0f

Task ‘SMTP server name - Sending and Receiving’ reported error (0×80042109): ‘Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).’

We have discovered the reason for this is that sometimes Outlook/Outlook Express, in conjunction with Norton Anti-Virus, has a hard time downloading some virus spam or spam that is waiting on the server that have corrupted formatting in their subject lines, bodies or attachments. The emails that are the most problem are the ones that either have blank subject lines or subject lines that contain the code: ” “. What happens is that these emails become “stuck” on the server and Outlook/Outlook Express will often give-up trying to download them. The quickest way to resolve this issue is to log into the affected email account using webmail and then delete the offending emails (make sure to “Purge Deleted” after you mark the emails for deletion).

A few of our customers have also reported a similar problem using Eudora on Windows, but it does not seem to be as problematic as it is with Outlook.

For more info, please read the following:

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 813514

Symantec Document ID: 2001060516275506

For a long-term solution, you might want to consider switching to a more robust email program like Mozilla Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird, both of which are constantly being developed and improved by the Open Source community. Also, you should always use a Firewall and Anti-Virus program.

We haven’t had any reports of this problem occurring with customers using any of the email programs developed for Apple Mac OS X, so that may be another option you may want to explore.
When checking POP email using Eudora, there is a SSL certificate error. What can be done to avoid this? #

Here’s the Eudora error:

SSL Negotiation failed: Certificate Error: Cert Chain not trusted. Try adding this certificate to your certificate database for SSL to succeed. Certificate bad: Destination host name does not match host name in certificate. Cause(-6995)

This error occurs when Eudora tries to download POP email using SSL, which is not supported on our servers. To fix this problem, you need to disable SSL access in Eudora. From the main menu in Eudora, select “Tools”, then “Options”. In the “Options” window, select “Checking Mail” and in the section labled “Secure Sockets when Receiving” choose “Never” from the drop-down menu, then select “OK”. This should solve the problem and allow you to download email from the server.

You’ll need to make this change for all of your personalities that download email from our server and if you use our SMTP for outgoing email, you should change your outgoing settings as well.