Newest KB Articles in Mail (SmarterMail)

AOL Spam Policy

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:14:16 GMT

AOL has a system where users can tag email they receive at AOL as Spam. Their system has a serious flaw in the way that it blocks. Please see below.

In the graphic above at #1 a spammer sends some email to you at you@yourdomain.com. The mail arrives at #2 your server account. Because you have set this up as a forward the server only acts as a slave and sends the mail on to your AOL account which is #3 above.

There are two cases that happen. AOL may see the email as spam or you flag the email as spam when it get to your AOL mailbox. AOL does not block the real sender which is the spammer at #1 they block the server that sent the mail into AOL which is #2 the server hosting your account. This not only blocks email you might want but it effects every account on the server that may want to send mail to an AOL user.

We also have an anti-spam system built into SmarterMail, but it blocks the source of the email #1 which is exactly the way it should work. We can only describe their system as defective. We have been in contact since last week with AOL about this issue but their support is next to non-existent.

Please take one of the following actions.

Take AOL out of the picture by setting up a real mail account instead of forwarding it on. The more mail is handled the chances increase that there are going to be problems. Each time mail is forwarded it looks more and more like spam to receiving servers. This is because spammers use this trick of relaying mail from one server to another before it is finally sent the end recipient.
Choose to use an Internet Service Provider other than AOL that only blacklists the originator of spam and not the forwarding mail-server.

Troubleshooting: Unable to forward mail to personal email account at AOL.com

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:25:17 GMT

Some ISPs have strict spam policies and blacklist the sending server for forwarded spam. AOL blacklists servers that forward spam to their servers. This has become a problem, so we no longer all email to be forwarded to AOL.com accounts.

Top Network does not allow the use of automatic email forwarding to AOL email addresses. This is done due to AOL blocking our servers when it forwards spam email an an AOL account holder marks these messages as SPAM. You will receive 1 warning regarding any email account forwarding to an AOL address. After such warning, we reserve the right to suspend your account or remove all email addresses forwarding to AOL. A third violation will result in your account being removed from our server. To read more on the seriousness of this problem please click here.

You can find further information related to AOL’s anti-SPAM systems at: http://postmaster.aol.com

How-to: Protecting yourself from spam sent to and from your domain

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:39:28 GMT

Spammers can send email from a spoofed account using your own domain name and send it to you. For example, a spammer can send an email from anywhere on the internet from bob@example.com to joe@example.com . Since mail servers see this as an inbound delivery, they do not require SMTP Authentication to deliver in this way.

The best way to protect yourself from these types of spam is to do the following:

Require SMTP authentication for your domain (Top Network requires SMTP autrhentication by default);
Add an SPF record for your web site in DNS (see http://help.smartertools.com/smartermail/v5/Topics/SystemAdmin/Misc/DNSSettings.aspx);
Enable / Configure / Require DomainKeys (see http://help.smartertools.com/smartermail/v5/Topics/DomainAdmin/Settings/DomainKeys.aspx).

General: What is Greylisting

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:29:32 GMT

Greylisting essentially bounces all unknown message trying to connect to your server. However, emails from Trusted Senders and White listed IP’s will automatically bypass Greylisting and are delivered directly to the Spool.

The premise is that SPAMMERs create scripts that bombard your server with email s. These messages are then bounced back to their sending email server. Since, most Spammers email is not coming from a valid email server, the messages are not retried and therefore this reduces the amount of SPAM that your customer receive.

For those messages that are returned to valid email servers, the messages will be retried at least four times. If the first retry is beyond the Block period (default 15 minutes) and within the Pass Period (default 6 hours) the message is passed to the Spool and it goes through its normal processing. A record is also created that says this is a valid email address and keeps it for 36 days (default). If another email from the same email address is received within the 36 day, record clock is reset for an additional 36 days and delivered directly to the Spool.

How To: Configure Blackberry

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:26:49 GMT

Steps to configure Blackberry:

1) Sign up with Blackberry.net for an email address, i.e., username@blackberry.net

2) Configure SmarterMail account to auto forward email to username@blackberry.net

3) Configure Blackberry to check Blackberry.net email

4) Set the Reply-To setting to your SmarterMail email address

This configures your Blackberry to receive email to the handheld through your Blackberry account. And also configures your handheld to set all outbound email’s replies to be sent to your SmarterMail mailbox

How To: 550 Authentication is required for relay

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:24:07 GMT

The reason for this error is that your email server requires SMTP Authentication to send outgoing mail. In order to resolve this issue you will need to configure your email client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, or Thunderbird so, that you are an authenticated user.

For Outlook do the following:

Click on the Tools menu
Click on Email Accounts
Click View or change existing e-mail accounts then click Next
Highlight an email account and click Change
Click More Settings
Click Outgoing Server tab
Check the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication
Make sure that Use same setting as my incoming mail server is selected
Click OK
Click Next
Click Finish and your done

For Outlook Express do the following:

Click on the Tools menu
Click on Accounts
Highlight an email account and click Properties
Click the Server tab
Under the Outgoing Mail Server, check the “My server requires authentication” check box
Click the Settings button
Make sure that “Use same setting as my incoming mail server” is selected
Click OK
Click Apply
Click OK
Click Close and your done

General: Incoming (POP3) & outgoing (SMTP) server names

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:16:04 GMT

Incoming mail server (POP3): mail.topnetwork.com

Outgoing mail server (SMTP): mail.topnetwork.com

How-To: Setup POP in Outlook.

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:12:38 GMT

POP is a protocol used to retrieve email messages from an Internet email server. Generally, when you use POP is it best to use it from one particular computer. When you download your messages, the POP email server stores them for your later retrieval. If you go to another computer to connect and retrieve that same message, it will no longer be on the POP server.

You can also download a copy of new e-mail messages and not delete items from the POP3 e-mail server. This is useful if you check your POP3 e-mail account from a number of computers or profiles. For example, you can download a copy of the messages on your work computer, and then on your home computer, you could download the e-mail messages and delete them from the POP3 server.

If you’d like to setup POP on your Outlook account:

On the Tools menu, click E-mail accounts
On the email accounts page, select add new email account
On the server type page, select the POP3 radio button and click next
On the email accounts page, type in all the information requested, i.e., your name, email address, etc
1. Click More Settings
2. Click the Outgoing Server tab
3. Check My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication
4. Click OK
Click next and then finish

General: What is the maximum size of my mailbox?

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:08:37 GMT

The standard quota for all the mailboxes in a user's account is 10 MB. The maximum number of message allowed in a user's mailbox is 500. Your quota may be different. You can see your quota by looking at your account through the web messaging interface.

Troubleshooting: I can retrieve my mail, but why can I not send mail from my PC?

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:07:58 GMT

Some Internet providers have recently started blocking port 25, your PC port used for the transmission of mail, in an attempt to help prevent direct to MX spamming, and abuse of open proxies / relays from their dialup and broadband customers.

Some major ISPs that do this (and the address of their SMTP server) are:

People PC (mail.peoplepc.com)
MSN (smtp.email.msn.com)
EarthLink (mail.earthlink.net)
Verio (mail.verio.net)
Cox (smtp.west.cox.net and smtp.east.cox.net)
Others [smtp/mail].example.com

Unfortunately a side-effect of this practice is that it prevents users from accessing our SMTP servers. If you are getting error messages when you try sending mail which state that smtp.domain.com is not responding or not found, contact your ISP, and find out if they are blocking port 25. If they are, you can probably send outgoing mail through their outgoing mail servers. Ask your ISP for Outgoing Mail setup instructions to use their SMTP servers.

Sometimes, however, an ISP will not allow email to be sent through their SMTP server with a different domain. In other words, you may only be able to use their SMTP server if you have your reply address set to your ISP-based email address, not your custom domain name address that you have through our mail-servers.