FAQ: Privacy and Security

> What has NetBox done for anti-spam protection?

What has changed, what happened?

As part of the continuing effort to curtail unsolicited electronic mail (spam) and in cooperation with various ISP's and other organizations, NetBox Inc. has implemented a relay blocking mechanism that may result in NetBox users receiving a new "error" message if they have not recently used their account.

In case you are not familiar with the term, "spam" is the bombardment of multiple Internet addresses [sometimes into the millions] with unsolicited commercial email [UCE]. While NetBox has always had a strong anti-UCE policy and prohibits abuse by NetBox customers, the NetBox mail servers have been used by "spammers" without legitimate accounts to relay their unsolicited messages.

This is essentially theft of NetBox resources affecting customers by delaying their mail while thousands (or tens of thousands) of UCE messages are being processed. It also threatens NetBox mail routing since ISPs may block ALL mail coming from NetBox because of spam relay abuse.

To combat this unauthorized use, NetBox has implemented a method to block the use of resources for message relaying by non-users. When a message comes into the mail handling agent it is checked against a list of IP addresses that have been recently used to pick up mail by POP. If the originating IP address is on this list, then the message is processed normally. If the originating IP address is not on this list the sender gets a message requesting a POP retrieve (read mail) access be made. This is to validate that IP address before sending outbound messages.

This means the user should check for mail on NetBox before sending outbound messages through the NetBox smtp server. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHETHER THERE IS MAIL WAITING, NOR DOES IT MATTER WHETHER THE MAIL IS PICKED UP OR NOT. The act of checking for messages is enough for the system to capture the IP address of your current host in the verification list.

Please note that these changes have no effect upon either telnet users or mail routing using the unique NetBox Real-To: technology and in fact may be completely transparent to the user.

NetBox regrets any inconvenience caused by this verification procedure and hope you agree this is a worthwhile step toward reducing electronic mail abuse and maintaining the integrity and quality of NetBox communication services.

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> How do I deal with anti-spam relay protection?

1. Check your mail, using POP, before sending mail.
The act of checking your mail authenticates you as a client of NetBox.

2. Change your SMTP server from netbox.com to your local ISP.
As you are a client of both NetBox and your ISP either SMTP server may be used. If you have a dial up or LAN connection to your ISP you will always be authenticated on their SMTP server.

This in NO way effects your ability to pickup mail from your NetBox account.

3. Set up your POP email program for the following.
We have a number of users who have multiple computers and who check mail from multiple machines.

You can set all but one of the machines to leave mail on the server. This is a setting in configuration or properties or special depending upon the mailer.

Additionally, to minimize download time, on machines that you wish to use only to send mail from you may configure the account to pick up mail only over 1K or less.

4. MS Outlook Users.
MS Outlook always checks mail before sending. To avoid having to resend mail after a failure - expanding on item 2 above - go to properties and In the account properties, set:

1.'General:Reply to' to be the NetBox account
2.'Servers:SMTP' to be the local ISP's SMTP server.

This way, if someone just 'replies' to message sent from Outlook \par express, it will be sent to the NetBox account.

5. What if I am still seeing intermittent problems?

Here are some possible, intermittent causes.

Your timing was a bit unlucky.

If it is your first try of this login session/day and you tried to send a message before the system has had a chance to get your IP number recorded in the database.

The IP number is first recorded when you successfully COMPLETE a POP transaction. Once the system has your IP number, it can take as long as 30 seconds to get into the database. The database is refreshed with the new IP numbers at 30 second intervals so if you tried to send during that time, you would get the standard error message.

Much more unlikely is that you tried when the database is locked - either by other processes or as it is being created. This can happen in theory but the probability is low.

How do I now send mail?
How do I deal with message: "relaying denied"?

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> How secure is my mail in Netbox?

Any mail coming across a public network is at risk. However, once it is received at NetBox, we have implemented various security steps to protect your mail. Since NetBox deals primarily with mail service, the access to our server is limited. The NetBox accounts themselves are kept securely in private areas of our server to protect them. By default, all mail is deleted from the server once it has been successfully rerouted.

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> How does "Real-to" work to protect my privacy?

The "Real-To" feature is a unique and powerful tool for rerouting messages through your NetBox. It works like this:

You can register one or more alternate mail accounts with Netbox (these might be your business account(s) or account(s) with another ISP such as Yahoo). If you wish to use one primary access account, but send mail out to various correspondents as though it originated from your Netbox address, you address the mail to your NetBox account but include the address of the "real" recipient in the first line of your message using the format "Real-to: name@xyz.com". NetBox will check for the existence of a "Real-To" line from all messages originating from one of your registered addresses, and redirect the mail to your correspondent with your netbox address now in the From section of the message header. This process presents a coherent identity to your correspondent regardless of which email account you used to originate the message. This allows you to:

• Use one type of access account (e.g., business) to respond to non-business emails with a different address or identity
• Make it difficult for third parties to trace your identity to your primary access account
• manage multiple mail addresses from a single primary address