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A Glossary of Email TermsAccount AggregationThis is our term for collecting email from various different accounts and
putting them all together, in one mailbox. ActiveSyncActiveSync is a Microsoft program which runs on both a mobile device, such as a PDA or SmartPhone, and a PC to allow:-
A mobile device often comes with a cradle for it to sit in which
connects, via a USB cable, to a PC although ActiveSync can also operate over a
Bluetooth or WiFi connection. Bayesian FilteringBayesian analysis
was invented by the English mathematician the Reverend Thomas Bayes -
1702 to 1761 - and is a method of determining probability based on past
events. Black-ListA list of email
addresses, email domains or IP addresses known to originate large
amounts of spam. DKIMDomainKeys Identified Mail is an enhanced version of the
DomainKeys initiative to fight spam. DomainKeysThis is a way of being absolutely sure which mail-server a particular
email has originated from. This is important as the originating address of most spam and
virus emails has been forged. Email DomainThe non-personal
part of an email address to the right of the @ sign. False PositiveA genuine email that an
anti-spam system has wrongly classified as spam and which has therefore not
been delivered to its intended recipient but has either been deleted or moved
to a Spam folder for a human to review. FirewallThe term comes from the
motor industry where it means the physical barrier between the passenger
and engine compartments in a car, used to protect passengers in case of an
engine fire. Grey-ListingAn anti-spam technique where a receiving mail-server always refuses
to accept email for a set time period, such as 15 minutes, after an
unknown mail-server tries to send mail
to it for the first time. HamThe opposite of spam: genuine email. IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol version 4This email protocol was developed to overcome the disadvantages of
POP3, namely that downloaded emails are only stored on one PC's hard
drive making them vulnerable to being lost if the PC fails or is stolen
and, if you check your email on 2 PCs, say at home and at work, email
downloaded onto one PC is not accessible from the other. IMAPS - Secure IMAPSee SMTPS for a discussion of secure email protocols. Mail-ServerA software program that
sends, receives and processes emails for users of one or more email
domains. Mailing ListA feature of many
mail-servers which provides the best way to send the same email to many
recipients. OST FileThis is the file that Outlook uses, when operating in cached mode
with an Exchange server, to store a full local copy of a user's email and
other related data where the master copy is held on the Exchange server. Outlook AnywhereThis is the new name for RPC-over-Http or Remote Procedure Call over
HyperText Transfer Protocol. Outlook Mobile Access - OMAOMA is the simplest possible webmail system for accessing
your Exchange mailbox using a web browser. Outlook Web Access - OWAOWA is Microsoft's name for the webmail system that comes with Exchange Server. PDA - Personal Digital AssistantThis is a generic name for a small hand-held computer, usually with a
large touch-screen but still small enough to fit into a shirt pocket.
Smartphones are very similar to PDAs but are smaller, more of a phone and less of a computer and don't usually come with a touchscreen. PhishingPhishing is the attempt to acquire sensitive information, such as
credit card details, or on-line banking logon information, by subterfuge
in order to steal money from the individual targeted. POP3 - Post Office Protocol version 3This is the most common method used to receive emails on a PC by
downloading them from a mailbox on a mail-server into the Inbox of an email program. POP3S or SPOP - Secure POP3This is the encrypted version of standard plain-text POP3. PST FileThis is the name of the file that Outlook, the email and personal organiser program from Microsoft, uses to store all your Email, Contact, Calendar, Tasks and Notes data plus other related data such email accounts and mailbox rules. The default name and location of this file is:- |
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c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Data\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst |
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In versions of Outlook prior to Outlook 2003, a PST file had a size limit of 2gb. Push Email or Direct Push TechnologyTo be able to access your email on a mobile device is only half the
story. RPC-over-HTTP
|
1 - |
Its DNS name must match the IP address it's sending from |
2 - |
It mustn't be on a black-list |
3 - |
It's IP address mustn't be in a range used for domestic Internet connections |
4 - |
Its geographical location - determined from its IP address -
shouldn't be a place from which large amounts of spam originate. |
5 - |
Is the mail-server on the receiving server's white-list |
Maintaining a SmartHost's trustworthiness is an ongoing task and so it's often easier for a company to have their mail-server just use a smart-host rather than try to establish their server as a trustworthy email sender.
A Smartphone is a mobile phone incorporating some hand-held computer features.
They are usually only slightly larger than a standard mobile phone but
can access the Internet to browse webpages and check email.
Smartphones usually come with a standard phone keyboard and standard-sized
screen, without the touch-screen ability.
Smartphones can still synchronise with Exchange server and perform push email.
They are the smaller cousins of PDAs.
The method used to exchange email between mail-servers on the
Internet.
It is also the most common way for email programs such as
Outlook Express to send emails to their local mail-server for delivery.
The original SMTP standard has no built-in security and so the
contents of emails are sent over the Internet as plain text - as are
passwords if authentication is needed.
SMTPS is a variation of SMTP which
uses SSL to create a strongly encrypted link between an email program on
a PC and a mail-server or between 2 mail-servers.
At present the majority of mail-servers cannot accept SMTP email over
an encrypted link and so standard SMTP has to be used.
Although
Arrowmail allows and encourages the use of SMTPS, we also have no
control of whether the recipient downloads the email you sent them
over an encrypted link or in plain text. Therefore sending email to our
server over an encrypted link does not guarantee that it will have
end-to-end encryption between you and the recipient.
There are ways to ensure your email remains encrypted and unaltered
between yours and the recipient PC but these are measures you take on
each PC, not on the mail-server and require that your recipients
prepare for this in advance.
Our advice is to connect to our
mail-servers using secure protocols if you can but if some problem
prevents it, perhaps a firewall, then use standard protocols instead and
don't worry about it.
Officially: Unsolicited Commercial Email.
More Generally: Any email that arrives in your Inbox which you don't want.
At present there is a battle between the senders of spam and those
attempting to block it and so, like the flu virus, the nature of spam
keeps evolving to evade the counter-measures.
The good guys will
probably win in the end but it may take another 5 years before this
happens.
Spam broadly consists of:-
1 - |
Dishonest emails where the intent is to steal or trick you out of some money, or to install a virus or unwanted program on your PC. |
2 - |
Advertising - usually for disreputable products such as fake qualifications and pirated software. |
3 - |
Time-wasting nonsense. |
To maintain the accuracy of our anti-spam system there are certain types of unwanted emails that we don't consider as spam:-
1 - |
Newsletters from reputable companies who will honour
requests to unsubscribe. |
2 - |
Genuine non-commercial, inoffensive email from people you
just don't want to communicate with anymore. |
This is a number between -100 and +100 that our spam filtering system
assigns to every email that passes through it.
The Spam Index is arrived at by adding together the scores of several
different spam classification methods.
The following table shows what actions are taken depending on an
email's Spam Index:-
Spam Index |
Action Taken |
less than 5 |
The email is considered to be a genuine email and allowed to continue, unmodified, to the recipient's Inbox |
5 or above and an email is considered to be spam. |
|
Between 5 & 20 |
The email has the Spam Index pre-pended to the email's subject line and a Rule then moves it to the recipient's Junk E-mail folder. |
20 or above |
The email is simply deleted. |
Webmail is where you use a
web browser, such as Internet Explorer, to read, write and send emails
instead of using a separate email program such as Outlook Express.
Hotmail is probably the most famous example of a webmail system.
The big advantage of webmail is that you should be able to use it to access your email when
all other methods have failed. All you need is a computer with Internet
access, no configuration or extra programs are required and, when you've
finished, the computer you used won't have any of your email information left on it.
Webmail is server-based so that you see the same set of folders
wherever you access it and there's no local data on your PC that
needs to be backed up.
The disadvantages of Webmail are:-
1 - |
You need an uninterrupted Internet connection for the whole
time your are using webmail. |
2 - |
Webmail is slower that using an email program, such as Outlook or Outlook Express, and, if the connection speed drops much below 28.8kbps, it becomes unusable |
We certainly allow webmail access for all the accounts on our mail-server but, when possible, you'll have a better email experience if you use a separate email program.
A list of email addresses
known to be genuine senders.
Incoming emails from white-list
members
automatically get 100 subtracted from their Spam Index which almost
guarantees that they will be classified as non-spam.
A white-list is used to reduce the
number or false positives and, when a false positive is found, the sender's
address is often added to the white-list.
A VPN is a way of connecting a computer in a remote location to a private network by
means of the Internet in such a way that resources on the private
network can be accessed by the remote computer just as if it were a
locally connected computer.
Encryption is used to ensure that, while
data is passing over the VPN, it's kept secret from anyone who may be
able to access the VPN data stream as it travels over the Internet.
Even with a Broadband connection, the rate at which data
can be transferred across a VPN is around 50 times slower compared with what can
be achieved by a locally connected computer.
VPNs are therefore not
always the best solution for remote access to private networks.
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