For information and instructions for setting up your email client, such as Microsoft Outlook  or Mac Mail, please refer to the Email Client page.

Email aliases allow you to have an alternate address that is directed to your main email account. For instance, John Smith may want the email smitty@yourISP.com for his personal email, but a more professional john.smith@yourISP.com for business. An email alias would allow mail sent to the alias john.smith@yourISP.com to be sent to the real mailbox of smitty@yourISP.com.

Email aliases also allow you to point to an alias on a different server. If you have an email account with a different provider, for example, you can have an alias with your domain name. In this case, the alias points all mail sent to the alias at that mailbox to a remote server.

Webmail can be used as an easy way to receive and send messages while out of town. You can also use Webmail to regularly send and receive email messages, rather than using an email client. Webmail allows you to view the messages on the server without downloading email to your PC. Learn more on the Webmail FAQ page.

Yes, you can use your email client to send and receive messages while travelling. However, to send messages, you may need to adjust your settings to use an Authenticated SMTP, or Outgoing, mail server instead of the standard server you use at home. Refer to the Authenticated SMTP page for further details and instructions.

emScan protects you from unwanted mail and dangerous viruses. Learn more in the emScan Spam & Virus FAQ.

E-mail spoofing is a technique commonly used for spam email and phishing to hide the origin of an email message and/or to make the message appear to be from some other source. It is simple to “spoof”, or alter the sender information in a message by changing things like the From address, Return-Path and Reply-To fields. This way, spammers can easily obscure the actual sender address to make it more difficult to track down the source of the spam.

Spammers will often insert the recipient’s address in the “From” line, making it look like the spam message you received came from your own account. Or, they may insert a fake address or the address of some other recipient on their spam list. In fact, it is not uncommon to receive a spam message that looks like it was not even meant for you, because the spammer put your address in the BCC field, and some other address in the From field.

This type of message is likely not spam, and is more likely to be a legitimate non-delivery receipt (NDR) reporting the failure of a spam message from a “spoofed” email address.

Unfortunately, many spammers are spoofing email addresses. To conceal their identity, the spammer will enter your address in the “From” line when sending a spam message to other victims. As with legitimate messages, if the spammer’s message is sent to an email address that does not exist or cannot be delivered for some other reason, then the message will bounce back to the address in the “From” line as an NDR.

There are two reasons that these bounced messages may not always be quarantined. First, the server that generated the NDR, is a legitimate server sending a legitimate message. These messages are not actual spam, but rather a report from the receiving server that the original message could not be delivered. Second, if the receiving mail server does not include the content of the original message in the NDR, the spam filter has no way to know that the message is questionable. If the original content had been included in the message, and the content was suspicious enough to trigger the filter, the message would likely be quarantined.

Once an email address has been in use for awhile it becomes the target of spam. And, as the overall volume of spam increases, the likelihood of a spammer spoofing your address also increases, producing more bounced messages. Spam filters can help reduce the actual spam sent to your address. However, there are no methods to block bounced message notifications unless the original content is included in the bounced message notification by the server that generates it.

Phishing messages are fraudulent messages crafted to make the recipient think that the message is actually from a legitimate source. For example, someone can easily insert the address “admin@” in front of the recipient’s domain to make the message appear to be from their Internet Service Provider. An identity thief also knows that many of the people on their phishing list will happen to have relationships with organizations like Bank of America, Amazon or the IRS. They will spoof the sender address and format the message so it appears to be from one of these organizations on the chance that several of the recipients will have a relationship with them.

Phishing emails can look very legitimate, and usually ask the recipient to click on a link or follow a series of steps in an attempt to gather information that can be used to gain access to their account or to steal their identity. Phishing emails are also sometimes used to trick the recipient into downloading a virus or a keylogger (a program used to collect the user’s keystrokes and report them back to the sender).

Learn more on the Protect Yourself from Phishing page, or test your Phishing IQ at Sonic Wall.

An Open Relay, also known as an insecure relay or spam relay, is an SMTP e-mail server that allows a third party to relay e-mail messages. This means that unauthorized users, such as spammers, can send and/or receive e-mail that is not for or from a local user. Open relays make it possible for anyone to send mail through this type of server. Learn more on the Open Relay page.