KICS: Email Account Management

Non-profits that don't have their own domain name, however, will use youraccount.kics.bc.ca.
In this case, replace youraccount with your KICS Account name.

Please review these pages carefully. If you still can't find the information you need, request assistance by submitting a Support Ticket.

Email Account Management

Retrieving Email

It is sometimes convenient to check your email from our webmail system. To do so, visit the 'Log Into Your Webmail' page.

A lot of people, however, find it more practical to download their email messages using an email client (such as Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.).

An email client is a computer program that is used to send and receive email. Although configuring an email client can be tricky, it only needs to be done once. The client will then check your email for you in the future.

Email clients offer a lot more features, and are much quicker and slicker to use than webmail.

While there are many different email clients (almost all computers will already have one installed), they are all very similar to set up. We have detailed instructions below for Setting up Outlook Express.

All email clients need the following information in order to check your email:

· Email address to check
· Incoming Mail Server name
· Incoming Mail Server username
· Incoming Mail Server password
· Outgoing Mail Server name

· Your Incoming Mail Server server is yoursite.com. Replace the word yoursite.com with your domain name. · Your Incoming Mail Server username is youraccount-user (your KICS account name, followed by a hyphen and the name of the email account you are configuring).

In addition to any email accounts that you've may have created, you have a default email account. The username for that email account is your KICS Account name (see Your KICS Account for more info). The password is your Account password, which was included in the setup email you received when you registered your KICS Account.

· Your Incoming Mail Server password is whatever password you chose when you created the email account (if you are configuring the default account that KICS created for you, however, the password was provided to you when you registered your account).

The email address user@yoursite.com would use the following settings:

Incoming Mail Server name: yoursite.com
Incoming Mail Server username: yoursite-user
Incoming Mail Server password: xxxxx

As another example, if your domain name was doefamily.bc.ca and your email address was jdoe@doefamily.bc.ca, you might use these settings:

Incoming Mail Server name: doefamily.bc.bc
Incoming Mail Server username: doefamily-jdoe

If you've made it this far, you can now receive email using your email client. You cannot send email, however, until you complete the last step...

· Finally, you will need to enter the Outgoing Mail Server name. If you don't have this information, you'll need to contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP). KICS will not know your Outgoing Mail Server information, but here are the ones commonly used by our clients:

ISP		Outgoing Mail Server
Telus		mail.telus.net
Shaw Cable		shawmail.wk.shawcable.net
Net Idea		mail.netidea.com
Uniserve		mail.uniserve.com

Related Topics:

Email account forwarding
Use KICS for Outgoing Mail (SMTP)

Email Account Forwarding

You can configure an email account to automatically forward to another account.

To do so, visit your mail setup page (www.yoursite.com/tools/setup OR www.yoursite.kics.bc.ca/tools/setup).

Select the email address to forward
Select the box "forward to a different address."
Type the forwarding address into the box.
Click "Save Changes."

Email and Storage Quota

You can create and use as many email addresses as you'd like. You are limited only by the total amount of storage space consumed by your email addresses and your website.

If combined storage space consumed by all of your email accounts and your website exceed your quota, you have a 30 day grace period to lower storage usage.

During the grace period, your combined storage usage can exceed your quota by 100 megabytes without affecting mail delivery.

If you are still exceeding your storage quota after the grace period, however, incoming messages will be queued on our server for up to 24 hours. If some space becomes available, your messages will become accessible; otherwise, they will be sent back. You will not receive your email!

Your storage usage is not effected by email addresses which are automatically forwarded to another email account. In this case, the mail is not stored on our server (see "Email Account Forwarding").

You can check your Storage Quota at any time by logging into your account (see "Membership and Billing" for more information).

How do I use KICS as my outgoing mail (SMTP) server?

Tell your email program that your SMTP server is "smtp.kics.bc.ca", and that it requires SMTP authentication. Your SMTP username is your KICS Account name. Your SMTP password is the same as your mail setup password.

What if I lost my mail setup password?

Connect to our server through FTP, Telnet or SSH using your KICS Account username and password. Inside the Maildir folder, there is a file called password. That file contains your mail setup password.

What if I lost the password to one of my POP mailboxes?

Visit your mail setup page (http://yoursite.com/tools/setup) and click the mailbox whose password has been lost. Make up a new password. Type the new password into the "password" box and click "Save Changes."

How do I set up a mailing list?

First, use your mail setup page to create an address -- for example, "thelist" -- which forwards mail to several addresses. Create a second address called "thelist-owner" which forwards to your regular address. Then you will receive any messages about undeliverable mail, rather than the person who sent the message to the list in the first place.

How do I set up a mailing list with automated subscriptions?

Let's say you own yoursite.com and you want to set up a mailing list called goodfolks@yoursite.com. People will subscribe to the list by sending mail to goodfolks-subscribe@yoursite.com. The person who is in charge of the list (deals with complaints, problems, etc) is joe@yoursite.com. Log in using your SSH client (like putty) and type this command at the dollar sign prompt:
user@kics:~ $ kics-ezmlm-make goodfolks@yoursite.com joe@yoursite.com Subscribe yourself to your new mailing list by sending a blank message to goodfolks-subscribe@yoursite.com. Within seconds you will receive a reply from the mailing list robot, asking you to confirm your subscription (this prevents people from being subscribed to your mailing list without their consent). Reply to the confirmation message. Within seconds, you'll receive another message to acknowledge that you are subscribed. Test the mailing list by sending a message to goodfolks@yoursite.com. The mailing list robot will send your message to all subscribers (ie. yourself). Most of the mailing list's behavior is determined by ezmlm; you can find more information about ezmlm at ezmlm.org and at the author's page at cr.yp.to. Our kics-ezmlm-make program contains several additional features which you can customize or disable:

Each message sent out by your mailing list includes instructions for subscribing, unsubscribing, and contacting a human (goodfolks-owner@yoursite.com). You can customize these instructions by editing the GOODFOLKS/text/msg-bottom file in your home directory.
Messages containing the text "-- MAILING LIST INSTRUCTIONS --" are not accepted at the list address. This forces subscribers to remove excess quoted text before posting replies to the list.
Email signatures are silently removed from outgoing messages: if a message contains "-- " (hyphen hyphen space) on a line by itself, everything after that line is assumed to be part of the sender's signature.
MIME-encoded messages, HTML messages, attachments, viruses and spam are not accepted at the list address.

Normally, anyone can post messages, regardless of whether they're subscribed. You can change this rule according to the purpose of your mailing list:

If you put some email addresses in GOODFOLKS/senders-reject (one per line) then those addresses will not be allowed to post messages to the list.
If you create an empty file GOODFOLKS/senders then only subscribers will be allowed to post messages to the list. You can make sure this file exists, and is empty, by typing "true | tee GOODFOLKS/senders".
If you put some email addresses in GOODFOLKS/senders then only those addresses will be allowed to post messages to the list.

Here are some other important ezmlm features:

If a file called GOODFOLKS/archived exists, then an archive of previous messages is kept in GOODFOLKS/archive/.
If a file called GOODFOLKS/public exists, then anyone is allowed to subscribe or unsubscribe. Otherwise you have to do it yourself by logging in via telnet or SSH and running the ezmlm-sub and ezmlm-unsub programs.
Also, if GOODFOLKS/public exists, then anyone can retrieve a copy of message number 123 from the archive by sending a message to goodfolks-get.123@yoursite.com.

For more information about configuring and using mailing lists, contact help@kics.bc.ca.

I received spam. Where did it come from? What should I do about it?

The headers contain the only worthwhile information in a spam message. The source of the spam is the computer that sent the message to the KICS server. You'll find two lines in the headers that look like this:

Received: from unknown (HELO yahoo.com) (210.99.124.167) by duo.kics.bc.ca with SMTP; 31 Jan 2002 02:24:29 -0000

In this case, the source of the spam is 211.101.236.160. The word after HELO should be ignored; it is forged. If you forward this message to abuse@kics.bc.ca, KICS will block mail from 211.101.236.160 until we are contacted by the owners of that computer.

Received: from 217-126-229-201.uc.nombres.ttd.es (HELO gerencia.ayto-ciudadreal.es) (217.126.229.201) by duo.kics.bc.ca with SMTP; 5 Feb 2002 06:46:26 -0000

In this case, the source of the spam is 217-126-229-201.uc.nombres.ttd.es, which is evidently a computer in Spain. The word after HELO should be ignored; it is forged. If you forward this message to abuse@kics.bc.ca, KICS will block mail from 217.126.229.201 until we are contacted by the owners of that computer.

Received: from web20908.mail.yahoo.com (216.136.226.230) by duo.kics.bc.ca with SMTP; 27 Sep 2001 11:03:12 -0000

In this case, the source of the spam is web20908.mail.yahoo.com. You should forward the entire message, including headers, to abuse@yahoo.com.

Received: from seladm.selkirk.bc.ca (199.60.144.1) by duo.kics.bc.ca with SMTP; 9 Feb 2002 18:18:34 -0000

In this case, the source of the spam is seladm.selkirk.bc.ca; the spam was forwarded to the KICS server through your email account at Selkirk College. In general, KICS avoids blocking mail from local companies and ISPs, even if they are inadvertently forwarding spam to us.

Is spam illegal, or just annoying?

It might be illegal, but it's usually impossible for the legal system to do anything about it.

I received an attachment. Is it a virus?

On your email setup page at http://yoursite.com/tools/setup/ you can easily set up a virus filter on some or all of your email addresses. This will protect you from most viruses; it does its best to refuse any message that contains a program in an attachment. Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution to the problem of identifying viruses. Contrary to popular belief, you can not assume that an attachment is safe simply because you know the person who sent it to you. There are two reasons why not. First, the person who sent you the virus didn't intend to send it to you; the virus sent itself. Otherwise it wouldn't be a virus! Also, just like spammers, many viruses lie about which email address they're coming from. For example, if bob@yoursite.com has a virus, the virus might find doug@yoursite.com and yvonne@yoursite.com in Bob's address book. It will send a message to Yvonne using doug@yoursite.com as a return address. Neither Bob (the real sender) nor Doug (whose name is on the message) knew about the virus. Even if Doug has the best anti-virus program ever made, Yvonne (and you) can still receive a virus with his name on it.

I received a virus warning. Is it a hoax?

Probably. Before you act on it, verify it by looking it up on a virus-related web site like mcafee.com or symantec.com. If it says "forward this to everyone in your address book," then it is almost certainly a hoax. If it says "this is the most dangerous virus ever and it will destroy your hard drive," then it is almost certainly a hoax.

Setting up Outlook Express

All email clients (such as Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.) are configured similarly.

One could probably use these instructions—which are specifically for Outlook Express—as a guide to setting up another email client.

Open Outlook Express. From the top menu, choose Tools, then Accounts. You will se a control centre similar to the one shown below. Click the Add button, then click the Mail tab.

Type the name you wish to appear as the "From" address of each message sent from this account. Click Next.

Enter the email address you wish to add for this account, like address@yoursite.com. Click Next.

In the next window select "My incoming mail server is a POP3 server". Under "Incoming mail" enter your domain name (like yoursite.com or user.kics.bc.ca -- replace the word user with your account name).

Under "Outgoing mail", enter your ISP's SMTP server. This is supplied by whoever provides your internet connection.

Now you will be asked to provide a username and password. Enter your KICS Account name, followed by a hyphen and the address part of the mailbox that you created (for example, foo-allan if you are setting up allan@foo.kics.bc.ca and your KICS Account name is foo). If you are the only person who uses your computer, you can tell Outlook Express to remember your password, so you don't have to type it each time you check your mail. Click Next and then Finish.

You will now be taken back to the original control center. The new account should now show up, similar to the one shown below. If necessary, you can edit this account at any time by returning to this control center, clicking the account, then selecting Properties.

If you want to add more email accounts, repeat steps 1-5.

Click Close to return to Outlook Express.

7. The next time you refresh (Send/Recv) or open Outlook Express, it will retrieve messages from your POP mailbox.

Verify that everything is working correctly by sending an email to yourself.