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Email Update
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I wanted to give everyone an update about our recent email troubles and what we have done to correct the problems that we have been having the last few days.
Over the course of 1 week, Interlink had been flooded with SPAM. Incoming and outgoing. We tried various ways to remove the SPAM but it kept filling up our email server and therefore stopped us from finding where the SPAM was coming from.
On Monday 11-27-06 we doubled our hard drive capacity to try to allow us to run tests to see just where the SPAM was flooding in. This allowed us to see that certain users were unknowingly being used as SPAMbots - Basically sending out thousands of SPAM unknowingly for a third party program. When the bounced SPAM came back to our server, our server kept trying to submit it to the recipient for 7 days and therfore filling up our email server. Some mail would take 7-10 hours to go thru the queue and make its way in or out of our server.
We found the SPAMbot accounts and stoped email access for them. We also initiated a security feature for email clients such as Outlook express. This feature is SMTP (out going email) authentication. Now, if you used one of our setup disks, SMTP Authentication was already setup and being used but if you setup your email account manually, this setting may not have been set correctly. If SMTP authentication is not setup on your email client, you will no longer be able to send email. The server will tell you that the recipient is not on the list of known good hosts.
If you use webmail, you should not have a problem. If you use outlook express, please follow the following steps:
1) Open outlook express as normal
2) From the tool bar click on "Tools"
3) Click on "Accounts"
4) Make sure your email account is highlighted in blue
5) Click on "properties" on the right side
6) Click on the "servers" tab at the top
7) At the very bottom, place a check mark to the left of "my server requires
authentication"
8) Click ok
9) Click Close
Done
You should be able to send email without any trouble.
When we started this process, the mail was taking 7-10 hours to go in or out of the server. After running hundereds of tests, mail is going in and out of our servers within a few seconds - which is normal. I am watching and testing the email server hourly to make sure that no new problems arise.
Thank you
Dan Abbuhl |
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| Monroe, NC Location 704-283-1903 |
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| Newland, NC Location 828-733-8778 |
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