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Frequently asked questions about E-mail
Answers:
- What are your POP3 and SMTP mail servers?
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Any mail program you use will require you to enter the mail servers. If spelled incorrectly, you will not be able to send and/or receive mail.
The POP3 (Post Office Protocol) is the incoming mail server used to retrieve your mail. The SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the outgoing mail server used for sending mail.
POP3: 775.net
SMTP: 775.net (if you connect with us, otherwise your SMTP server
will be the outgoing mail server of your ISP)
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- Also make sure you enter your ENTIRE email address as your User Name
when logging into your E-Mail. In most programs such as Outlook
Express, you have to change it to the entire email address from its
defacto entry.
Make sure there are no commas or whitespaces included when typing in the mail servers. Also, make sure you type with lowercase letters.
- I can't send/receive email
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For Netscape/Outlook Express users, see our Online Setup Instructions page for a step by step guide for setting up your email account. Otherwise, the following items are needed for your email to work properly:
- Your Name: Type in your Full name or nickname
- Email Address: This is listed at the top of your account receipt. It follows the form username@domain-name where username is the 3-8 letter name you chose when signing up.
- Incoming/Outgoing mail servers: These are listed above.
- Account Name: This is your username. It is your full email
address. Make sure you type these in lowercase letters.
- Password: This is the password you chose when signing up. Passwords are case-sensitive.
Any email client you use with our system will require the above information. Make sure Secure Password Authentication is not selected.
- Can I check my mail when I'm out of town?
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You can check your mail from anywhere in the world if you are connected to the
Internet via our WebMail
system. If you don't have internet access at your remote location, you can dial long-distance to InterComm. The only changes you make to your system is to edit
the phone number to reflect the long-distance call.
If you do have internet access at your remote location, you can set up an email program to retrieve your email through their system. This requires additional setup. InterComm does not allow relaying of mail through our server from a different provider.
In order to retrieve mail from your location, you need to have your email program set so it uses 775.net as the POP3 server. The outgoing SMTP server needs to be entered as specified by your remote Internet provider. Otherwise you will be able to retrieve mail but not send.
- My email program hangs whenever I try to check my mail
Back to topIf your email was working recently and you haven't made any changes to your settings,
it is likely someone has sent you a large file. Files that are several megabytes in size can take from 5 to 30 minutes or
longer to download depending on your connection speed and the size of the file. Let the program sit for several minutes.
Some email programs have difficulty dealing with large files and may produce an error message.
You can use
WebMail to delete the offending message or you can contact us to help you fix the problems.
Depending on your email program, if you cancel while downloading mail, there is a chance that a pop lock will be placed on
your account. This effectively stops your ability to send/receive mail until our systems administrator removes the pop lock.
If you believe this may be the problem, contact us and we can take care of it.
You can use WebMail
to fix most problems regarding your email, such as specific messages not
coming through, or you get messages that repeat over and over again.
You can customize your Anti Spam settings via WebMail.
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Why am I getting so much spam?
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Many times, the reason you are getting so much spam is as a result of
something you have unwittedly done, and didn't even know that doing so will
cause you to get more spam. There are several things that we
recommend doing to prevent getting spammed. One interesting thing about spammers is that they do not care about
the products advertised in their email. The only way spammers make
money is by selling YOUR email address to other spammers for mere
pennies. Make sure they never get your email address in the first
place. Since REAL email addresses are worth more to a spammer than a
fake mailbox, or one that someone does not check, most of the junk you get
is a method for the spammer to find out if you have a REAL email box that
is checked frequently, or a dead one, which is worthless to a
spammer. Spammers build lists of valid email addresses and sell them
to other spammers. Don't get on those lists, once you do, its nearly
impossible to be removed. #1. NEVER Reply to a spammer. Doing so tells the spammer
you check your email, and that is worth money to them. #2. NEVER Click on a "click here to be removed from our
mailing list". This, unfortunately, also tells the spammer that
you check your email. Those links should really read "Click
here to get more spam". Very rarely are these links ever
legitimate. #3. Do NOT sign up for anything that requires you have a valid
email address. By doing so, you are giving spammers a brand new
email address to spam to. If you need to use a valid email address
to sign up for something that sounds legitimate , we recommend that you
set yourself up with a second "disposable" mailbox from a free
provider, such as Yahoo!
or HotMail.
That way, if the disposable mail box starts getting more junk mail than
real email, you wont be burdened by having to tell everyone about your new
email address. #4. Turn off your Preview Pane. Spammers use some very
evil tricks to see if you check your email or not. With a Preview
Pane, you can see the entire content of the message, and that will tell
the spammer you check your email. To turn off your Preview Pane in
Outlook Express, click on the "View" menu, then
"Layout...". Uncheck the option that says "Show
Preview Pane". This helps when all you want to do is select the
message, and delete it. It also helps to prevent viruses if you have
email that is not hosted with us. #5. Do NOT Open messages from spammers. If you have
turned your Preview Pane turned off, and you open the message from the
spammer, that's as good clicking on a link to "Send me more
spam". Just select the message(s) and delete them. #6. Do NOT buy anything advertised by spam. Buying
something advertised to you via spam supports the spammers, and tells them
that spamming works to increase their business. As a result, they
will send more and more spam. #7. You can forward the spam you get to us. We STRONGLY
recommend that you do not open the message to forward to us, instead,
while your Preview Pane is off, you can RIGHT Click on the message or
groups of messages, and select "Forward as Attachment". By
doing so, you don't open yourself up to getting more spam and fight it the
right way. Please forward the messages to as attachments spam@intercomm.com.
*We cannot offer support if you have changed your Anti Spam Levels in WebMail. #8. If you have a WEBSITE or a personal web page, Do NOT use
normal links for making your email address public. Spammers use
programs called harvesters which will scan your web pages for email
addresses. The trick to this is to make it not look like an email
address to these harvester programs, but to keep a real email address on
your website so people can email you just as easily. Use this
page to "encode" your public email address. Replace
your <a href="mailto: link on your webpage with the code provided by http://www.manastungare.com/asp/preventspam.asp.
and change the part that reads ">Email</A> to anything but your email
address (unless it is encoded), something like, ">email us</A> or ">contact
us</A>. #9. Last Resort. Change your email address. If you
follow our advice, and set up a brand new email address, you wont have
major spam problems. **The author of this article follows his own
advice and gets only 3 or 4 pieces of spam every six months and has had
the same email address for years. - There are organizations that are dedicated to fighting spam.
Facilities such as http://www.spamhaus.org/
and http://www.mail-abuse.org can
give you more info than you ever wanted to know about spam. We do
NOT give /sell / provide / or distribute, in ANY way shape or form, ANY of
our customers information to ANYONE, and we have been asked. We do
not even provide any of our customers information to the major credit
reporting agencies. We also do not allow spamming in any way shape
or form from our systems. Doing so will cause major problems for all
of our customers, and will get you permanently banned from using our
systems. Don't do it!
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Some of my email isn't coming thru, why?
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We do our best to
fight spam and make sure legitimate email comes thru. Occasionally,
a message will get blocked by a spam filter that it was not intended
to. Odds are that something in the message set off our spam filters
and caused the message to be deleted. This happens about 1 in 1,000
emails, or about .01% of the time. If this happens, you can see if we blocked the message by
checking your Quarantine in our WebMail
system. If we did block the message accidentally, you can release it
from the Quarantine, and make sure it doesn't happen again by overriding
our system with your personalized Whitelist, found under the Settings link
at the top of the page. You may have to turn your Quarantine on
under the Settings link at the top of the page, then Anti-Spam on the left
on our WebMail system,
and you can fix it yourself! By default, Quarantine is not
turned on so you may have to turn it on and have them resend their message.
You can also add them to your customized "Whitelist" so any
email from them will bypass our spam filters. Its the easiest way you can
permanently fix the issue. If the sender had their email bounced back to them, odds are, there
is a good reason. One of which is their Internet Service Provider
has very lenient Anti Spam Policies and allows for their customers to spam
from their system, those spammers will cause problems for them (and you), even if
they don't get a single piece of spam from that particular spammer.
Spammers cause problems for everyone, not just their victims. The
person trying to email you should be advised to make a complaint against
their ISP that they need stricter policies for their customers that spam
from their networks, and that the should step up on the enforcement of
those policies. The other reason they should contact their ISP is
that they will most likely everyone at that ISP will have problems sending
email to everyone, not just our customers, and not just the person trying
to email you. We will need the error message they get back to fix
the problem. To do that, please enter their email address on our Cant
Get Email, Its Being Returned page to have our system automatically
send them an email with all of the information they need. Even
though you may not be able to receive email from them, this will bypass
normal email methods and ensure we can get the information we need to get
this fixed. Please keep in mind that we are not trying to block your
friends, but stop spam for all of our valued customers.
For more information on why certain ISP's get blacklisted, we recommend
that you read up further on this at http://www.spamhaus.org
and http://mail-abuse.org.
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I keep getting emails back that says I sent and
email that I didnt send!
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Many times this is caused by a new breed of viruses. These viruses probably have not infected you as we scan all email that comes thru our system for viruses before it can get to you. If you have an email address that is not hosted by us, (IE @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com, etc...) your virus protection will vary depending on how they are set up. Some email hosts will scan all of their email, some will not. In the event that you, or someone else that uses your computer, does have an email address hosted with someone else, and that email is checked on the your computer, you may have a virus. To find out, update your Anti Virus software and scan your computer. If you
don't have any Anti Virus software, you can get a free online virus scan at
www.antivirus.com (provided by Trend Micro). Keep in mind that their website can only scan your computer for current viruses and will not protect you at all times. Normal scans take about 30 minutes. You'll probably find that you are not infected, but better safe than sorry.
These viruses have most likely found their way into the computer of someone you know. Once infected, these viruses will email themselves to everyone on that computers address book, and if they have your email address, that means the virus will try to send itself to you. Since your email account with us is Virus Protected, you'll never even see it. The other thing these viruses do is they disguise where they came from by saying that the email came from someone else in their address book. For example, you know a guy named Joe. Joe has another guy named Fred in his address book. You
don't know Fred. Joe also has you in his address book. Joe gets infected with a new virus because he
doesn't have InterComm as his ISP. Joe's computer then starts sending out hordes of email to everyone in his address book, and each one of those emails looks like it came from someone else in his address book. So Joe's computer will send an email to Fred as having come from YOU!
That's why you get an email message back that says you sent a virus. This also keeps anyone from telling Joe that he has a virus on his computer. If Joe was able to find out rather easily that he had a virus, it
wouldn't take Joe very long to take care of that virus, but the harder it is to find out that Joe is the one with the virus, the longer that virus will live on the internet.
Joe doesnt know his computer sent a virus to Fred as having come from you,
Fred doesnt know that Joe's computer was the one that sent him the virus
as having come from you (if he got it), and you wonder why you get the
message back that said you sent the virus (if Fred didnt receive the virus
because his ISP has Anti Virus on their computers, those computers are the
ones that send YOU the message that you sent a virus). That's how these viruses
work, they are very tricky.
Many of these viruses are written to play as much on psychology as they do on computer code. The viruses are written so that you will think it is important and open it, and as a result, cause your computer to become infected also. If you do happen to get an emailing virus, our system is set up to kick a person offline so they call us to find out why and we can help. We may also send you an email if the type of virus you have is not an emailing virus (also known as a worm, or a virus that spreads thru the network) to let you know. We can see some of the viruses because they will try to "attack" our computers, and since we watch our network closely, we will see specific types of attacks on our systems, and since we know what is really happening, we try to help you.
Listed above in our Anti Spam section, we recommended that you turn off your Preview Pane in Outlook Express. One of the reasons we recommend this is because you may get a virus emailed to you and if you so much as select the email to get rid of it, you'll get infected also. To turn off your Preview Pane, in
OE (Outlook Express), click on the "View" menu, then "Layout...", then uncheck the "Show Preview Pane" option. With your Preview Pane turned off, you can safely select the offending message and delete it without getting infected and without Anti Virus software on your computer. This is also recommended to reduce the amount of spam you may get. Spam works similarly, by telling the spammer that you have actually checked your email, and will result in more spam. Preview Pane is a nice convenience, but it ends up causing most people more of a headache than it is worth in the long run.
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