Reading email Forwarding email Sending email Spam filtering implementing SpamAssassin Virus protection Email recovery

News

• Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird on PC.
• Email forwarder on CSIM account management page.

Introduction

CSIM is providing its own email server for the benefits of the users of the program.

The email server is called mail.cs.ait.ac.th.

CSIM email server offers the following:

• enhanced possibilities to read email, with POP and IMAP, as well as encrypted connection;
• encrypted solution to send email with roaming facilities;
• automatic filtering of unsolicited commercial email (spam), it now implements SpamAssassin;
• virus scanning of email.

Both practical solution and technical explanation are presented on this page.

Reading incoming email

Reading from the web

The popular IMP webmail is now available for CSIM. You can read your mail and send mail from anywhere when you use CSIM Webmail page. This is the same webmail used by ITServ.

For convenience, the folders that you create with webmail are compatible with the folders created with pine.

Reading from bazooka or banyan

To read your email from the newly installed machines bazooka or banyan, you can use one of the program pine or mutt you can use other programs, but they must implement POP3 or IMAP. A solution exists for emacs. The program you use must be configured to access the mail server and recover your incoming email.

• For pine, each time you enter the program, it will ask you your user name, you can press Enter for the default then you must type your password. There is no way to save the password, you have to type it each time you enter pine.

  

• For mutt, you don't need to define anything. But if you don't want to type your password each time, you can create a .muttrc file in your home directory.

  set pop_user="a100100" set pop_pass="TH30rem_"

  Example of .muttrc file

  Because the .muttrc file contains your password, you must be sure that the file is not readable by others. For that matter, issue the command chmod 600 .muttrc then you can verify that the file has the proper access right with ls -l .muttrc

  -rw------- 1 a100100 aug2005 42 Jan 20 11:00 .muttrc

  
   
• For thunderbird, follow the instruction from the screen capture bellow.
  

Reading from a PC under Microsoft Windows

To read email, you need an email program that will communicate with CSIM email server. You can use Mozilla Thunderbird.

Communication can be done using POP or IMAP protocol. IMAP should be prefered when possible as it offers a better flexibility, it allows you to read your personnal folders and not only your incoming mailbox that is located in the system files.

Note: when using IMAP protocol, the Location Mailbox Prefix or the IMAP server directory should be set to /var/mail as shown on the examples below.

In order to read incoming email, you need to authenticate to CSIM email server. Your user name is your standard user name you use with Unix and samba. Authentication can be made through normal password, OPIE one-time password, challenge or encrypted connection:

• Normal password authentication uses your standard password to open the mailbox. This authentication is limited to CSIM building only as it makes use of plaintext/clear password. Normal password is subject to easy attacks by hackers.
  Any email program can use normal password authentication.
• Challenge authentication with APOP for POP protocol and Cram-MD5 for IMAP protocol will be discontinued by end of September 2006.
• Encrypted authentication takes advantage of a fully encrypted connection between the email program on your PC and the email server. Encryption authentication is not limited to CSIM building. Encryption is done via SSL/TLS. This authentication should be prefered as it protects not only your password but every data send between the email program and CSIM email server.
  Note: when using encrypted POP or IMAP, a different TCP port is used. This is the case for every encrypted Internet service; port for POP is 995 and port for IMAP is 993.
  You can use Mozilla Thunderbird with encypted authentication for POP.

Use Secure Connection Select Leave messages on server	Select TSL connection

Note: you should avoid using Microsoft software to read email as some strong security issues are bound to the products. Instead, you can use Mozilla Thunderbird.

You can also use software like pine, Mail or elm to read email on bazooka or banyan.

Note: you should avoid using email program from the laboratory computers may not be the best idea as a copy of your email will be downloaded to the hard disk of the computer. This copy may be available to read for any user of that computer.

Forwarding email

Email forwarding will be offered for a period of one year after your account with CSIM has been closed. This will allow you to keep on receiving emails on your CSIM address and redirect this messages to your new mailbox.

You have three different ways to forward email, depending whether you want to forward every message, or only the messages that are not spam.

Forwarding every email

Note: whatever the forwarding method you use, messages will be kept in the mail recovery system if and only if you keep a local copy of your message.

Using CSIM account management page:

This method is valid for users that have an account with CSIM, and for users that have no more account with CSIM but that still have email forwarding facility.

On CSIM account management page there is a field in the personnal data that can you to set-up an email forwarder. You can use this facility for one year after your user account with CSIM has been closed.

Using a .forward file:

This method is valid only for users that have an account with CSIM.

To forward every email, spam and non-spam, you have to create a .forward file in your home directory on Unix.

VoMauPha@yahoo.com, \a028138

Example of .forward file

Where VoMauPha@yahoo.com is the mailbox where you want to receive a copy of the email and a028138 is your mailbox on CSIM. If you don't want to keep a local copy, you should omit the part with your local account (a028138).

Note: there is a backslash \ in front of your local user account (your mailbox on CSIM), this backslash must be present.

Forwarding only non-spam email

This method is valid only for users that have an account with CSIM.

To forward only legitimate emails, the one that have been detected as non-spam, you must create a .procmailrc file in your home directory on Unix.

Where VoMauPha@yahoo.com is the mailbox where you want to receive a copy of the email. If you don't want to keep a local copy, you must remove the c: on the first line (:0).

Note: you must remove the .forward file and the forward defined in the account management page, else it will take precedence over the .procmailrc file and all mail, including spam, will still be delivered to the other address.

Next part: sending email.

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Last update: Oct 2012