May 18, 2004

Email Account Details

This post lays out, for the record, how your email client should be configured to access your Explosive.net High Performance Email account.

The Basics

  • Your IMAP4 or POP3 (incoming mail) server is hexogen.explosive.net.
  • Your SMTP (outgoing mail) server is also hexogen.explosive.net, either the default port (25) or, because some ISPs block that, port 587. It requires your username and password.
  • If you don't want to use a standalone client, you can access your mail via Webmail at https://hexogen.explosive.net/webmail/

UPDATED Feb 4 2005 New filter interface, webmail, SMTP port information

(Details behind the "Read more" link...)

Security Information
We support and recommend the following security options, at least some of which your mail client should implement:

  • SSLv2, SSLv3 and TLSv1 - Use port 993 for traditional IMAP-over-SSL or the default port 143 if your client can do STARTTLS negotiation. Please use some form of SSL encryption to protect your password!
  • SMTP AUTH on port 587 - Same username and password as for your IMAP login, supports STARTTLS and SSL, allows you to use our mail server for your outgoing mail no matter where you are.
  • CRAM-MD5 / DIGEST-MD5 authentication - However our server does not support Microsoft SPA (Secure Password Authentication) which is a checkbox option in Outlook and Outlook Express.

Mail Filtering, Antivirus, and Spam
Our IMAP server supports the Sieve mail filtering language. You can configure Sieve filters to automatically deliver messages into subfolders, send vacation messages when you're out of town, and much more. There is a web interface to configure your filters which you can access at https://hexogen.explosive.net/smartsieve. Keep reading for an example of how to use Smartsieve to set up a filter.

Spam Filtering
Your incoming email is automatically protected against spam and viruses. You will still receive some spam because we delete only those mails which are clearly Spam (score more than 20 points on SpamAssassin), or fail the virus checks. Anything that might be a legitimate mail gets tagged and delivered. If you want to filter out these spams, follow these steps:

  1. Using your mail client, create the mailbox you want to drop the Spam into
  2. Log into Smartsieve, and from the main menu, click "New filter rule", and fill in the form so it looks like: ( Screenshot)
    Conditions:
 If mail header: "X-Spam-Flag" contains: "YES" 
Actions:
 File into: [Pick mailbox]
  3. Click "Save changes".
  4. Click "Manage Scripts", and make sure that your script is Active. If not, check its checkbox and click "Active". You're done!

Your Quota
You can have up to 200MB of mail on the server. To find out how much mail you're currently using, log into Webmail; the bar in the top left corner of the screen shows how much you've used and what percentage of the quota limit that comprises. Once you hit your quota, you will not be able to receive new mail! Messages will bounce back to their senders with a message saying you're out of storage space, until you bring your usage back down below the limit by deleting some old mail. If you are a really high-volume mail user and want to negotiate a higher quota limit, please send an email to noc@explosive.net, we'd be happy to discuss the options with you.

Posted by eric at May 18, 2004 11:11 PM
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