Mail and news: features?
Steve
documentation for this on www.clara.net
I seem to recall at some point there was an alternative port to access
relay.clara.net: does anyone have any details? I'm asking because my
mobile phone provider for some reason seems to be randomly blocking
access: i.e. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Is there a way to pick up email for just a single username. That is if
someone sends to us...@myhost.clara.co.uk I can pick it up for just
"user"? I've tried variants of including "user" in the POP3 username but
everything I've tried just picks up all users of is an unrecognised
hostname.
Has mail filteting been withdrawn or is it broken? Spammers often use
the myh...@clara.co.uk and I had set this to be auto deleted. Now it
just always gets through with a large increase in spam.
Steve.
Kevin Reilly
> I'm on the old Clara Mail and News account. I can't see any
> documentation for this on www.clara.net
This account is defunct. You should have had an offer to migrate onto
something called ClaraNet Mail (which is the e-mail only service) and/or a
customised GigaNews account for ex-Clara Mail And News users (Usenet only).
http://www.uk.clara.net/giganews/subscription
http://www.uk.clara.net/giganews/faq/subscribers
If you were blocking all mail to myh...@clara.co.uk you may have missed
these messages, since that was the address both ClaraNet and GigaNews were
using for correspondence. I always had a higher priority filter to allow
such messages from Clara although the GigaNews one did get filtered away.
GigaNews were very efficient in sorting out an alternative address when I
explained.
If you haven't done any of this I'm surprised your e-mail is still working
at all. All of Clara's documentation suggests the account should have been
closed when the migration occurred. Then again, my record of interpreting
Clara's documentation isn't stellar (see other thread).
> I seem to recall at some point there was an alternative port to access
> relay.clara.net: does anyone have any details? I'm asking because my
> mobile phone provider for some reason seems to be randomly blocking
> access: i.e. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Can't really help with that. T-Mobile routinely block Usenet ports of all
things. Perhaps they've lumped it in with P2P due to the prevalence of
warez on the binaries sites. I have to go through a proxy to get
newsgroups on my mobile 'broadband'. But I've never heard of a phone
company blocking POP3 or IMAP.
Are you sure it's the phone company and not Clara? For a few months I had
my mail host polling my old Clara mailbox once per hour, pulling messages
using POP3 and placing them in my IMAP mailbox. On three separate
occasions they disabled the polling due to Clara's mailbox repeatedly
refusing connections and tying up resources.
Sometimes I think Clara's systems just get too busy to process requests.
If you're connecting in the background every five or ten minutes you might
not notice, but if you're polling once per hour (or in your case on demand
via mobile) it becomes more obvious when the connection's been dropped.
> Is there a way to pick up email for just a single username. That is if
> someone sends to us...@myhost.clara.co.uk I can pick it up for just
> "user"? I've tried variants of including "user" in the POP3 username but
> everything I've tried just picks up all users of is an unrecognised
> hostname.
Demon used to use something called 'plus addressing' where you could log
on as 'user+myhost.demon.co.uk' to collect mail for a single user. But
AFAIK this was a hack and never part of the POP3 specification. I don't
know if Clara ever used this but since their hostname structure is similar
to Demon's it might be worth a try.
> Has mail filteting been withdrawn or is it broken? Spammers often use
> the myh...@clara.co.uk and I had set this to be auto deleted. Now it
> just always gets through with a large increase in spam.
If you log onto Clara's webmail at https://webmail.clara.net/src/login.php
and click on Message Filtering you'll find your old filters migrated onto
the new filter system, which really is the worst of both worlds. At first
glance it looks a little like the MS Outlook server-side filtering system,
until you click a line to edit it and it's back to the old drop-down lists.
The days of "Steve's filter page" i.e. keeping a text-based filter file,
with useful comments and neat formatting, and uploading it in one go are
long gone. A while ago someone from Clara did say something similar would
appear one day, but then people said that about Jesus too.
As an aside, I always found that filtering on X-Envelope-To: headers
rather than To: headers gave a more reliable means of trapping spam
because many SMTP envelopes are forged. Occasionally I'd use both just to
make sure. If your filter is intact and set to look for To: addresses, but
spam is still getting through, it might be worth considering X-Envelope-To:.
Having said that, my mail was always forwarded to Clara from a hosting
provider. If you get your mail sent directly to your Clara host then I'm
not sure the X-Envelope-To: header will even be present.
Either way I'd also put a delivery rule for anything from '@clara.net'
somewhere above your deletion rule, just in case you're missing important
communications from Clara.
--
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
"Name a food that makes noise when you eat it."
"Really loud hamburger."
Contestant on Family Feud
Steve
use...@denali.org.uk says...
>
> On 18/10/2009 15:31, Steve wrote:
>
> > I'm on the old Clara Mail and News account. I can't see any
> > documentation for this on www.clara.net
>
> This account is defunct. You should have had an offer to migrate onto
> something called ClaraNet Mail (which is the e-mail only service) and/or a
> customised GigaNews account for ex-Clara Mail And News users (Usenet only).
>
Sorry meant I was on that, I did migrate and am referring to the
remaining half, the "claranet mail" account.
>
> > I seem to recall at some point there was an alternative port to access
> > relay.clara.net: does anyone have any details? I'm asking because my
> > mobile phone provider for some reason seems to be randomly blocking
> > access: i.e. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
>
> Are you sure it's the phone company and not Clara? For a few months I had
> my mail host polling my old Clara mailbox once per hour, pulling messages
> using POP3 and placing them in my IMAP mailbox. On three separate
> occasions they disabled the polling due to Clara's mailbox repeatedly
> refusing connections and tying up resources.
>
That's a possibility I suppose. T-mobile using NAT might end up all
looking like the same address and them blocking that sometimes.
If I'm on a laptop I can use an ssh tunnel from my home ADSL line and
that always works.
>
> > Is there a way to pick up email for just a single username. That is if
> > someone sends to us...@myhost.clara.co.uk I can pick it up for just
> > "user"? I've tried variants of including "user" in the POP3 username but
> > everything I've tried just picks up all users of is an unrecognised
> > hostname.
>
> Demon used to use something called 'plus addressing' where you could log
> on as 'user+myhost.demon.co.uk' to collect mail for a single user. But
> AFAIK this was a hack and never part of the POP3 specification. I don't
> know if Clara ever used this but since their hostname structure is similar
> to Demon's it might be worth a try.
>
Unfortunately I tried than and no joy. I can vaguely recall Clara having
something cleverer at one point, before they started withdrawing
features silently that is.
> > Has mail filteting been withdrawn or is it broken? Spammers often
use
> > the myh...@clara.co.uk and I had set this to be auto deleted. Now it
> > just always gets through with a large increase in spam.
>
>
> As an aside, I always found that filtering on X-Envelope-To: headers
> rather than To: headers gave a more reliable means of trapping spam
> because many SMTP envelopes are forged. Occasionally I'd use both just to
> make sure. If your filter is intact and set to look for To: addresses, but
> spam is still getting through, it might be worth considering X-Envelope-To:.
>
I noticed the new mail filters. I used to filter on X-RCPT-To but that
has now been dropped and am instead using Envelope-to:. Just done a few
experiments and although the previous filter didn't work I updated it to
include backslashes before '@' and '.' and that seems OK now.
Steve.