VFEmail ™

Frequently Asked Questions:
Server Settings
VFEmail Glossary of terms

Spam Issues

I received Spam from VFEmail.net.

I'm interested in using VFEmail's services, but I was wondering..

What does VFEmail give me that Hotmail doesn't?

Can I use my own domain name?

If I use my own domain name, will my email be virus scanned?

Can I use VFEmail as my primary incoming Email Server, virus scan all my incoming email, and forward it to my company's in-house email server?

Does VFEmail support domain mailboxes? What's a domain mailbox?

Can I relay my company's outgoing email through your server?

Why not just buy Norton Anti-Virus?

Is using VFEmail more secure than just building my own Email Server?

How much disk space do I get?

How is the bandwidth quota generated?

What is the daily message quota?

Why is VFEmail's bandwidth quota so low?

How are aliases handled?

What is a Disposable Email Address?

What's the Separate Outgoing Queue / IP ?

What is a 'Vanity Domain'?

What is a 'Personal Domain'?

What is a 'Domain Alias'?

What is a 'Virtual Mail Server'?

How does PGP work?

What is your backup strategy / data retention policy?

Can you confirm your TOR address?

What is the Metadata Mitigator™?

I've signed up for VFEmail, but I have another question.

How do I login via POP? IMAP? The Web?

Why can't I send mail from my email client?

My disk quota is full, how do I delete email?

Can I solely use Horde/IMP Web-Mail for my VFEmail client? Why would I?

Do you support SSL? POP3-SSL? IMAP-SSL?

I'm having trouble with Outlook / Outlook Express

How do I setup Spam Filters?

Help! My ISP blocks ports 25!

My email client doesn't have SSL, how can I use it?

How do I use the FTP service?

How do I close/cancel my account?

What is Challenge/Response?

Can I see my Login History?

What is a Non-US Mailbox?

I received SPAM from an vfemail.net user.
Firstly, be sure that the spam went through one of our servers, ie that in mail headers you have references to mail.vfemail.net [108.76.175.4] (or similar IP). Report abuses as soon as possible, including full mail headers, to: abuse@vfemail.net
VFEmail.net discourages SPAM.
VFEmail.net is a free hosting service, so all SPAM complaints about hosted domains/spanccounts are studied, and action can be taken. Please report SPAM originating from the above IP's with full mail header to abuse@vfemail.net, but not to our IP providers, nor our registrars.
We encourage you to report SPAM to sender IP provider, as an email IP provider such as VFEmail is not the only free email hosting available, and spammers have been forging vfemail.net from addresses lately.

What does VFEmail give me that Hotmail doesn't?
- Third, you can use your own domain name. With your own domain name, you can have as many accounts as you wish. firstname.lastname@mybusiness.com looks much more professional than firstnamelastname1234@hotmail.com
  You can even give each of your family members an account!

Can I use my own domain name?

Of course you can! With a Silver or higher account, you can create Vanity or Personal Domains for your use!
* You are responsible for purchasing a domain name, maintaining DNS (we recommend EasyDNS.com), and account maintenance within your own domain. Postmaster password resets will be billed at $2 each.

If I use my own domain name, will my email be virus scanned?

Yes! Any email that passes through our severs will be virus scanned. Even email you send via the Web Interface, or SMTP will be scanned before it's delivered.

Can I use VFEmail as my primary incoming Email Server, virus scan all my incoming email, and forward it to my company's in-house email server?

Yes! Send an email to the Administrator, detailing your needs. This does not have to be done at the same time your domain is setup.
* We are currently working on expanding the administration interface to allow the domain postmaster to forward an entire domain.

Does VFEmail support domain mailboxes? What's a domain mailbox?

Yes. Domain Mailboxes, also known as POPD, are a single mailbox that receives mail for an entire domain. You need to have an email server that will retrieve all message from this mailbox, and redistribute them to your own users.
We do not recommend using this method. We understand it has become popular, but it's really a kludge of POP to avoid a permanent connection.
Currently permanent broadband prices have fallen enough to allow anyone who wishes to run his/her own email server to do it 'right'.
A good, free, Win32 email server is Mercury/32

Can I relay my company's outgoing email through your server?

Yes. If you have a permanent connection, and a static IP Address, we can setup a relay for you. This way you can be sure your customers won't receive infected email!
* Static IP Relay Service is an additional $10/month.
Basic 'per client' Relaying is included in each package.
We do not tolerate spam.

Why not just buy Norton Anti-Virus?

Norton Anti-Virus (NAV) is a good solution for most desktops. In fact, we recommend it. Unfortunately, it takes a little technical know-how to install NAV in such a way that it works with your email client. In fact, it may NOT work with your email client. You would be safe sending email, but you may not be safe receiving email. VFEmail automatically updates virus definitions on a hourly basis. Since Email is currently the fastest way to spread a virus, you would have to be sure you were up to date each and every time you started your PC. With VFEmail guarding your front door, you can feel much safer, but that doesn't mean you should NOT use a Virus Scanner.

Is using VFEmail more secure than just building my own Email Server?

Yes! Well, it depends on what you know. We did it, therefore you can do it. But we've done all the hard work for you.
In addition to virus scanning, if you are a business, you don't want to let ANY untrusted PC's access your network from the Internet. By using VFEmail as your front end, AND your relay, you can configure your firewall to only allow VFEmail to communicate with your Email Server, increasing your Internet security.

How much disk space do I get?

Please see the VFEmail Account Grid
In short, free users (Copper Accounts) start with 50MB disk space, and 50MB bandwidth quota.

How is the bandwidth quota generated?

When sending, your quota is updated as soon as the SMTP session is complete.
When receiving, the last step before delivery is to add that message size to your quota.

What is the deaily message quota?

The Daily Message Quota is the total number of recipients you can send to in a 24 hour period. It's purpose is to deter account abuse from spammers.
It resets at 12am CST (-0500).

Why is VFEmail's bandwidth quota so low?

It's not, really. Some of the compeition likes to give you a large quota, but then counts EVERYTHING against it. Think of it this way:
A 10x10 foot room is 100square feet. That's what VFEMail gives you.
Some competitiors take that 10x10 foot room, and count the height too. Say the room is 10 feet high. That's 1000 CUBIC feet. Sounds big doesn't it?
Needless to say, VFEmail only counts incoming and outgoing messages. We don't penalize you for using webmail, and we don't count IMAP or POP downloads.
Hint: If you use your ISP's SMTP server, you can reduce your bandwidth use by aproximately 50%. Note, though, that your email won't be virus scanned.
A better solution is to send plain text email. If you haven't touched that setting you could be sending your messages twice - once in plain text, and once in an HTML/Propritary format. (They're combined into a single file, so people don't actually receive two seperate emails)

Alises and Disposable email addresses

There are two types of aliases that VFEmail.net supports.
Disposable Email Addresses, or Extension aliases, are username-extension@vfemail.net addresses. If your username is joe@vfemail.net, you can receive mail as joe-ibm@vfemail.net or joe-microsoft@vfemail.net as well. There's no setup required, this 'just works', and are unlimited. Their primary use is to create a temporary/unique address for signups. In this way, if 'microsft' started to spam you, you could simply blacklist your joe-microsoft@vfemail.net address.
Regular aliases are completely different VFEmail.net addresses that may be directed to your account. If you are joe@vfemail.net, and a paid member, you may create a 'fred@clovermail.net' alias which will direct email to fred@clovermail.net into your INBOX. Obviously, if the alias you want is an existing real address, you can't use it.
There are limits to the number of Regular aliases you can have. These limits are in the account grid. The limits of Regular Aliases come in two types - Changeable, and Permanent Aliases. Permanent Aliases only allow you to select x number of aliases (what your account limit is), and you keep those permanently. Changeable Aliases allow you to choose available email addresses and use them and remove them as you wish. So if you have a Changeable Alias of Fred@clovermail.net, you could remove that, and create a new alias of barney@manlymail.net. It's not required to reach your limit before you delete a Changeable Alias.

My disk quota is full, how do I delete email?

From your INBOX, click 'Options'.
Then click 'Deleting and Moving Messages'
Uncheck 'When deleting messages, move them to your Trash folder instead of marking them as deleted?'
Click the 'Save Options' button.
Return to your INBOX, and delete messages
Be sure to click 'Purge Deleted' at the upper right of the INBOX to ensure those messages are deleted.

What is the Separate Outgoing Queue / IP?

The Separate Outging Queue is designed to protect paid users from spammers who sign up and send out floods of spam. Spammers can cause queue backlogs - delaying outgoing mail, and can also get VFEmail.net blacklisted on some servers. By having a separate queue, paid users will send mail out via a different server, with a different IP Address, and should be protected from the problems spammers can cause.
To use the alternate queue, there is nothing you have to do. Routing is done transparently!

What is a 'Vanity Domain'?

A Vanity Domain is one you own. If your name is 'John Doe', you may have a domain named 'johndoe.com'. You can add that domain to your VFEmail.net account, configure your MX records at your registrar, and you will receive all mail to that domain in your VFEmail.net account!
By default, ALL mail for that domain will be delivered into your VFEmail.net account. Gold and higher users can set the default delivery to 'bounced', which will reject all mail to that domain except for any aliases that may be created. Once you've added your domain, those domains will appear in the aliases module.

What is a 'Personal Domain'?

A Personal Domain allows for complete mail services for your domain, on VFEmail.net hardware. Your 'postmaster' user can add and remove users, create aliases, set quotas, create mailing lists and autoresponders. It's equivalent to 'Shared Hosting' type packages you would find with a web hosting service, but much more.
Personal Domains are available for Gold and Platinum accounts, and require MX record setup at your domain registrar.

What is a 'Domain Alias'?

A Domain Alias is similar to a Vanity Domain, and allows the user to have many accounts tied to multiple domains. Let's say your Personal Domain is joe.com, and you create users 'Joe' and 'Sue' under it. Those two accounts would be reachable using joe@joe.com and sue@joe.com. If you then create a 'sue.com' Domain Alias to joe.com, both of those accounts would ALSO be able to receive mail as joe@sue.com and sue@sue.com.
Domain Aliases are available for Gold and Platinum accounts, and require MX record setup at your domain registrar.

What is a 'Virtual Mail Server'?

A Virtual Mail Server allows for complete mail services for your domain, on VFEmail.net hardware. Your 'postmaster' user can add and remove users, create aliases, set quotas, and even create mailing lists and autoresponders. It's equivalent to 'Shared Hosting' type packages you would find with a web hosting service, but much more.
The Virtual Mail Server is also available as a 'Personal' Domain for Gold and Platinum accounts.

How does PGP Work?

PGP is short for 'Pretty Good Privacy'. Using it allows you to send and receive encrypted email.
Keep in mind only the BODY of the email will be encrypted, all the 'metadata' must stay intact
As a user, you can create a Public/Private keypair, with your private key protected by a password.
Your public key should then be shared with a public keyserver, to allow others to send you encrypted mail.
Many clients, like Horde webmail, will automatically look for the recipients public key when you choose to encrypt your email
That's it. If you've selected to PGP encrypt your email, and received no errros, it's done.
When you receive an encrypted email, you will be prompted to enter your private key password, and Viola! you can read your encrypted email.
BEWARE!! If you lose your password, you will lose access to all encrypted email.
POPUps must be enabled to enter your password to read encrypted email.
For a list of email clients that support PGP internally, click here.

What is your backup strategy / data retention policy?

VFEmail feels it's important to provide a long-term, stable, environment for our users. In that effort, we perform nightly backups to an offsite host from all on-site and off-site mail storage locations. This backup runs at 12am CST (-0600) and contains all user data.
3rd party storage of user data is generally not wanted by privacy-conscious users. If you fall into that category, you will want to use POP3 and download your mail daily. Our backup is on a daily/weekly rotation, initiated by a snapshot. If you do recieve mail between your last POP and the snapshot at 12am, it will exist on backup for a week - unless it's on Saturday night, then it's a year. You should set your POP program to download every 5-10 minutes in order to avoid having your mail caught on backup.

What is the Metadata Mitigator™?

In short, it prevents the NSA (or any other eavesdropper) from tracking your communications back to you, or profiling your communications, based on email 'envelope' information.
The long version with all the details:
Email is in plain text by default. It is also structured much like regular postal mail. The email you compose is essentially 'stuffed' into an envelope. On that envelope is written the sender and the recipient. During delivery, servers then add the 'postmark' (timestamp and sending IP), just like the post office does. That information is called 'metadata'. It can be read almost as easily as you can read the outside of a sealed envelope. Except with email, that data can be stored in logs for any amount of time, and any government agency can request that data and practically be assured they will receive it. The United States National Security Agency in 2013 has been exposed as collecting and using that data to catalog email traffic and create associations based on who is communicating with whom.
VFEmail's Metadata Mitigator™ automatically rewrites the 'From' address on the envelope to a unique address for each email sent - creating virtual forwarding PO Boxes - which renders the gathering and cataloging useless as your real email address is never shown. Your recipients will still see the email is from you (they have 'opened' the envelope), and they can reply to your regular address without any addiitonal steps. No changes need to be made to your email client to enable this feature either. In addition, any bounced or rejected email will still be returned to you. This feature is availabe, and automatically enabled, for all Gold and Platinum users.

Can you confirm your TOR Address?

VFEmail can be reached via TOR at https://344c6kbnjnljjzlz.onion - the SSL certificate will read 'www.vfemail.net'.

How do I login via POP? IMAP? The Web?

For SMTP use mail.vfemail.net port 587 or port 465 w/SSL
For POP use mail.vfemail.net port 110 or port 995 w/SSL
For IMAP use mail.vfemail.net port 143 or port 993 w/SSL
Be sure to use your email address (username@vfemail.net) as your login name, and your password as your password. If your client supports it, change your SMTP port from 25 to 587 as suggested.
If you have your own domain, you can create your own accounts in the administration Section. Login as postmaster for your domain, and your password. If you have any questions, Send an email to the Help Desk.

Why can't I send mail from my email client?

If you are getting the error 'domain not in rcpthosts', you need to use plain text to authenticate to SMTP.
This is the only option for sending email to non-vfemail.net domains, all modern email clients should support this. It's usually enabled by a checkbox called "My Server Requires Authenticaion", or something similar, in your SMTP or SMTP/Advanced settings. VFEmail.net supports SMTP over SSL, so even though your password is 'plain-text', your whole connection has already been encrypted. Email the HelpDesk if you have any questions.
For an Outlook example- please see This Page
Also, Your ISP may be blocking Port 25. Click here for more info.

Can I solely use Horde/IMP Web-Mail for my VFEmail client? Why would I?

Yes! IMP is a wonderful Web-Mail client from the Horde Project. We have included both the preferences module, and an Address-book for you to use. You can share your addressbook with other VFEmail.net users, or other users of your domain.

Do you support SSL? POP3-SSL? IMAP-SSL? SMTP-SSL?

Yes! Yes! Yes!!! You can use SSL encryption with all mail services. STARTTLS is not supported, SSL will encrypt the entire connection.
Note: Most email clients don't support encrypted SENDING of email. Using CRAM-MD5 encryption, your SMTP-AUTH password can be encrypted (vfemail.net does not yet support CRAM), but your data will not be. Outlook is one of many email clients that support sending email over SSL. Just click the "This server requires a secure connection" box!
Keep in mind, your email will only be encrypted during this first part of it's journey (from you to your mailbox). During it's next part (When the 'Mailman' takes it to deliver it), it will not be encrypted.
In this case, you would want to use PGP to encrypt your email.
If your email client doesn't support encryption, but you want to encrypt your username/password, check out STunnel. You can use STunnel to create an encrypted connection between your machine and VFEmail.net for your email client to use.

How do I use the ftp service?

Only Gold and Platinum Accounts have ftp access, and it's easy. Use any ftp client, and connect to ftp.vfemail.net. Your email username and password are the same for the ftp site, and your FTP quota is seperate from your email quota. Putting files in your FTP folder will not take away from your mail quota. Note, the FTP service is limited to a max speed of 25KB/s.

How do I cancel my account?

Sorry to see you go! Just log into the Control Panel and select 'Close Account'. Your account will immediately reject any incoming mail, and you will no longer be able to retrieve mail. Copper accounts are removed after 90 days of inactivity - Bronze accounts are never removed for inactivity. Remember to cancel your recurring billing first!

Can I see my Login History?

Yes! In the User Control Panel there are two screens. The first, the 'login info' dropdown, will show you the most recent login from all login types (SMTP/SSTMP/SMTP-Submit/POP/POPS/IMAP/IMAPS/Webmail). The 'View History' button will display POP/IMAP logins from the last 24 hours, including Horde webmail.

What is Challenge/Resposne?

A challenge/response (or C/R) system is a type of spam filter that automatically sends a reply with a challenge to the (alleged) sender of an incoming e-mail. In this reply, the sender is asked to click a link to assure delivery of the original message, which would otherwise not be delivered. Once the 'Accept' action has occured, that sender will be able to send you email without any further interference.
You may pre-Accept senders via the control panel, or Accept senders who have not yet followed the link in the Challenge email. Senders who are in your addressbook are automatically Accepted.
Your Control Panel will also show a list of senders who've attempted to email you. The newest will always be on top. They will automatically be removed after 3 days, and the email will be returned to sender.

What is a Non-US Mailbox?

Users may have the option to migrate their mailbox to a Non-US server. Currently, this server resides in the Netherlands, and employs full volume encryption.
Using this server can increase performance for European customers. It may or may not offer increase levels of privacy, as that is a legal matter and there are differing opinions.

IMAP
- IMAP is a method of 'reading' email where all your email is stored on the email server itself. You can create folders that reside on the email server, so that you may access ALL your email from many different clients, and locations. With IMAP, you can use Ou tlook at your main computer, and IMP when your on the road, and still have access to all your email. Port 443
IMAP-SSL
- IMAP over an encrypted link. Port 993
IMP
- IMP is the name of the Web-Mail client vfemail.net uses.
POP3
- POP3 is a method of 'reading' email where your download each message to the email client you're currently using. Unless you purposely 'keep a copy on the server', you will not see already read email from other locations (i.e. IMP) Port 110
POP before SMTP
- This is another authentication method. You basically check for new mail, and the server 'remembers' that you are a valid em ail user, and allows your computer to send email through it.
POP3-SSL
- POP3 over an encrypted link. Port 995
SMTP
- The service that receives email from your email client, to deliver to another user. Port 25
SMTP-AUTH
- SMTP-AUTH is one way to let the SMTP service know you are a user that can send email. Your email client sends your username /password before it sends your email.
SMTP-SSL
- SMTP over an encrypted link. Port 465
Web Mail
- To Check/Read your Email via your Web Browser. VFEmail uses IMP from the Horde project.

Port 25 blocking is widely used by some ISPs to easily resolve two "problems".

First, it is a means used to block spam. By not allowing mail to be sent through any non-ISP servers, it is thought that spammers are prevented, at least in theory, from se nding out huge volumes of unauthorized junk email. The second, and more common use of port 25 blocking, is to prevent small, home-based businesses from using "residential" accounts for commercial purposes, which are billed at substantially higher commercial rates than residential. Thus, certain "key" ports (port 25 for email, port 80 for web, etc.) are prevented from working in both directions (i.e. you can surf OUT to port 80 for web pages but, no one can surf IN to your computer on port 80).

With Port 25 blocking, anyone logged in to an ISP access number will only be able to send mail through the that ISP's mail servers.

To tell for sure if your ISP does not permit you to use external SMTP servers, try to telnet to mail.vfemail.net port 25. If you are able to get through, you should ideally see this:

$ telnet mail.vfemail.net 25
Trying 108.76.175.1..
connected to mail.vfemail.net (108.76.175.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 vfemail.net ESMTP

If you get some other error, we will need to see the error to provide a diagnosis.

Many ISP's including AT&T, Earthlink, Mindspring and MSN do not ALLOW OUTGOING SMTP. Here are the information links for the various ISPs we have work with:

SOLUTIONS:
If your ISP uses port 25 blocking, it is beyond our control to correct this situation. If your email client supports it, you might try using port 587 (smtp-submit) instead of 25 to send email. You can also enable SSL, which will not only encrypt your username and password, but will also use port 465.

For faster resolution of this problem, please check your ISP's policy on this issue prior to contacting our support department.

Finally, as a last-resort, VFEmail provides SMTP/IMAP services over what are typically HTTP ports:
SMTP - alt.vfemail.net port 80 (SSL enabled)
IMAP - alt.vfemail.net port 443 (SSL enabled)
You will have to manually accept the certificate because the hostname will not match, but your communications are still encrypted.