We seem to be having problems with our phones which is causing error when folks try to connect. We are working with the local Telephone company to get things worked out but their progress has so far been very slow going. We'll keep this page up to date with news but in the meantime, if you have a problem or question and cannot connect via phone, please do drop us an email here: admin@vpop.net.

Thanks,
-tom

We recently implemented a feature in our SPAM prevention mechanism called "greylisting".  This feature can be turned on/off for your entire domain or individual email accounts.  The greylist is a simple mechanism which has no possibility of miscategorizing your inbound mail as spam or legitimate.  It works by deferring all new mail temporarily, requiring that the sending mail server retry the message after 10 minutes.  Once a mail server connects and delivers mail successfully to the system, the combination of the mail server's IP address, the "To:" and "From:" fields are added to a database which allows all mail in the future to come through directly.

Email systems are purposely built to handle brief outages so any legitimate email should retry shortly after our initial deferral.  But spammers don't often take the time to retry messages based on email standards so their mail never makes it through.

You may experience some delay intitially from certain addresses.  If you have a problem which needs to be addressed, please do let us know.  We are whitelisting the major providers so they will never experience the delay but the service seems to be handling mail quite efficiently and with little impact on delivery times.

Look for the option in your Mail Admin area and you can choose to turn it on or off.

Shortly after the previous post we were able to convince SBC to remove the block on mail coming from our network.  The issue remains tricky because they do not inform us when changes occur and tend to make decisions without investigating first (at least in our case).  So for now, the SBC problem is behind us.

Many VPOP customers have mail for their domain forwarded to the email account of their ISP and many of these folks use SBC (via Yahoo DSL, sbcglobal.net, etc.).  If you use SBC or one of its affiliates and your email is forwarded to your account, SBC is now blocking it.  We are working to get the problem resolved to the best of our abilities but it is largely out of our hands.  If you are experiencing bounced email message it would be best for you too to contact SBC and ask them to cease bouncing your domain's email.

For those of you with web hosting accounts which provides for POP3 mail, the problem can be remedied by removing the forwarding rule and retrieving the email directly from our servers with your favorite mail reader or our webmail system.  If you are unsure how to accomplish this, drop us a note and we'll get you started.

We are working on a new server to replace the aging "ring.vpop.net" server.  If your website is hosted by that server, be on the lookout for a nice upgrade.  We'll post again as we get close to deployment so you can be on the lookout for the few needed moments of downtime associated with the move.  We are a little extra paranoid when adding new servers so we stress test them over and over again before actual deployment.  Look for the change to come towards the end of March, 2004.

UPDATE: The new server is in place and working quite well.  We had a couple of brief hiccups which affected a couple of customers and to those folks, our sincere apologies.  Each time we upgrade the operating system or a complete server we update the scripting language engines and associated libraries and a couple of these libraries did not get recompiled.  They have been noted for future upgrades so they are not missed again.  In the end, we are quite pleased with the performance and added redundancy this new server is providing.  If you happen to notice anything funny, please do not hesitate to contact us: admin@vpop.net  OR 888-811-8767

There is a fairly new tactic being used by the "bad guys" in an attempt to get you to install their virus or worm, sent via email.  Many virus filters will stop attachments which are not password-protected.  And many people will open a document which has a password associated with it, assuming that it may be "official".  The New Scientist has a brief article on the topic and it is worth the 60 second read.

We have implemented a new webmail system for your use, provided you have a POP3 or IMAP account with VPOP.  The webmail system can be found here: http://webmail.vpop.net/.

Spam Filtering has been enabled across the system.  If you have a POP3 or IMAP account with VPOP, you can massage the setting in your mail admin area.  The spam filtering works by evaluating inbound mail and if it meets the general "score" of your level of spam filtering, it will either be passed through to you or bounced to the [apparent] sender.  If you have filtering on your email client, you may opt for the "Tag Only" mode which adds a header to your messages and provides a score which you can then filter upon.