Web Mail Blog

Users frequently ask for instructions to insert pictures inline in outgoing messages using Web Mail.

Web Mail is one convenient way to access your EarthLink email, but like many other Web Mail services (browser-accessed email) EarthLink Web Mail does not currently have a feature to insert pictures inline in outgoing messages. We will be adding the ability to do this in an upcoming release. Currently you can only attach pictures as files to be opened by the recipient. To add attachments to a message, click on Browse at the bottom of the compose window.

You can put pictures inline using most installed email software with your EarthLink account, including EarthLink Mailbox or Outlook Express. You can download EarthLink Mailbox software here, and get setup instructions for that and other email software here.

Like most other users, I look forward to having this feature added to Web Mail and I'm pushing to get it done as soon as we can.

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A lot of users have asked about saving or copying messages from Web Mail to their computer, particularly the Sent copies that are in Web Mail. Some users want to know how to just save a single message as a file (which is easy to do) and others want to know how to move messages in bulk just to free up their online storage space. We can do that too.

There are several ways to accomplish this, but first it is important to understand the difference between accessing your mailbox via Web Mail, or via any other email software like Outlook Express, EarthLink Mailbox, Apple Mail, etc. The two main advantages of using Web Mail are that you can access your mailbox from any browser on any computer, and you don't have to install or configure any software. All messages are stored on the server and you just view them using your browser. With any email software installed on your computer (called POP software or a POP client) you are downloading the messages to your own computer hard drive, and then viewing and managing the local copies on your own computer. Some advantages of this are that you can view or compose messages while offline, and your storage space is only limited by the size of your hard drives.

When you use both Web Mail and other email software, understand that the only folder in Web Mail that is accessible by your other email software is the Inbox. This isn't a limitation created by EarthLink; it is just how the POP protocol works with all email software. POP software (Outlook, etc.) has no concept of online folders, and can only download messages from the online Inbox to your computer. Then once you have the messages on your computer, obviously you can sort and store them in local folders.

If you aren't completely clear on how Web Mail and other email software access your mailbox differently and how they can work together if you use both, then please read this FAQ for more information. It's essential to understand that part first.

        Continue reading "How do I save Web Mail messages to my computer?" » »

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Since it comes up fairly frequently, I've added this recent Q&A to the FAQ section of the blog.

I bet no one has ever done this before. I have my email address and password saved so that I don't have to enter it when I check my emails and for some reason my computer at home lost that information. So now on my one computer at home, I can't check my email any longer because I can't remember my password.

I also have it all automatic on my computer at work so I can check it here but that doesn't help me because I don't know what my password is.

Can you help me find out what it is?

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Some users have been confused by the new control for forwarding messages.

When you click on Forward, you now see two choices for how you would like to forward your message. These choices have always existed, but you could only change them in the Preferences and then use the same selection all the time. This didn't meet the needs of many users, so we've exposed this option on the compose toolbar. For now you must make a selection each time you want to Forward a message. We will be improving this soon to give the best of both worlds, where you can change the choice inline, or use a single click to use your default choice.

Here's what the two selections mean:    

Inline text - this means that the original message text from the sender will be copied into your outgoing message body, and you will see it below what you are typing. This allows easy reference to what the sender said when you are responding to it. This option is most appropriate for regular message correspondence.

As attachment - this is the default forwarding type used by some other webmail services. It means that the original message will be sent along with your message, but as a file attachment. The recipient will not see the forwarded message in your message body, but will need to click on the attached file to view the original message. And if that message was re-forwarded several times, the reader might see a common "nesting" effect where you have to click down through several layers to get to the original. This is all controlled by how each subsequent sender handles the message. In the case of complex HTML emails with formatting and inline images, particularly newsletters, jokes with pictures, and things copied from web pages, you are safest using the "As Attachment" option to make sure your recipient gets the exact original message displayed as intended.

In both cases, any file attachments that came with the message you received and are now forwarding, are resent along with the new message. Don't be confused by inline images that are actually remote links retrieved at viewing time only, those files are not included in the original message and not forwarded in your message. Depending on how the original sender set them up, they may or may not go through.

In most cases your selection of inline text or attachment has no effect on how attachments to the original message are handled. In some cases, depending on how well-behaved the email program used by the sender was, you may need to use "As attachment" in order to make sure all of the original content and files are included in your Forward. One major Web Mail service in particular seems to have this problem with their outgoing messages. So if you get reports of recipients not receiving your forwarded attachments, use the "As Attachment" option. Note that this potential problem only applies to forwarding a message already sent to you. When you create an original message and attach a file to it, that file will always be correctly sent to the recipient.

There have been a few reports from users with old browsers that the forwarding selector doesn't work for them. The oldest browsers we test on and support are IE 5.5, Safari 1.3, and Firefox 1.5. On all other browsers (plus these) we test the most recent versions. If you are having trouble with a supported browser, try clearing your browser cache (delete temporary Internet files) and then restart your browser. If that fails, see if there is an update to your browser available for your operating system.

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When circumstances change users sometimes change how they get their Internet access, due to moving to another town, work-related access, or other reasons. We've had a lot of questions lately about how to keep an EarthLink mailbox if you won't be using EarthLink to access the Internet. A related scenario is if your Internet access provider has been using EarthLink to provide your mailboxes, and that provider is moving their email to another place and offering you a new email address. I've also gotten a lot of questions from users in that situation.

In both cases the answer is yes, you can keep your EarthLink mailbox and address. We have an email-only plan for $3.95 per month. If you have an EarthLink mailbox already then you can simply call customer service at 1-800-EARTHLINK and tell them you want to convert your mailbox to a "Premium Mail" account. Even if your EarthLink account or mailbox has already been closed, you can still do this for a few weeks as your mailbox won't have been deleted yet and can be recovered. We can just re-open it for you.

Read more about Premium Mail here. But don't sign up through that web page; you must call customer service in order to convert over an existing mailbox.

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A common technique used by unscrupulous spammers is to use a stolen email address in the From header of their message. Or a made-up one that happens to match yours. So your address might go out to thousands of mailboxes as a spam sender. Many of these messages will bounce since spammers use email lists that are often computer generated and guess at what are likely real addresses to send to. It's common for spammers to guess potentially valid addresses by taking a common username and adding valid domains to it. For example, chances are there will be a " bob@ " at just about any provider's domain. They send out so many that a lot of these guesses will hit. But when they don't hit, some of the messages will bounce back to you, cluttering your mailbox with bounced messages you never sent in the first place.

This practice is fraudulent and illegal, and sometimes the culprits can be tracked down and stopped. But don't count on it, as these scam artists usually relay their messages through compromised computers to cover their tracks. You can find more information, and report these incidents here.

Usually if you wait a few days the spammer will move on to using some other victim's address and you will stop getting bombarded with these bounced messages. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do but wait.

We have some ideas about ways to block most of these "fake" bounces and only accept real bounces. Fake bounces can usually be identified because the original message didn't come from within EarthLink, but the spoofed address used by the spammer was an EarthLink address. We're looking into a method called BATV which can identify these fake bounces for us. Look for an update on this later.

Don't worry about the safety of your mailbox when this happens. Just because a spammer has used your address as the From line in their outgoing messages, does not in any way mean they have compromised your mailbox or have any access to your messages.

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Users often ask if they can access the EarthLink Web Mail site (webmail.earthlink.net) using the browser on their mobile phone or other hand-held device.

Generally the answer is no, as the browsers on most mobile devices are not supported by Web Mail. It may work for you in some cases but we don't really support it, and the display format of Web Mail is not set up for small screens. However, your mailbox IS accessible from most mobile devices using the email software (POP3 application) that comes on the device. If your device has email software, then the settings to use are:

• Outgoing server set to smtpauth.earthlink.net

• Port for outgoing server set to 587

• Authentication is required for sending (outgoing), and enter your full email address for the login, not just the username part.

• Incoming server set to pop.earthlink.net (or pop.mindspring.com or pop.otherdomain). Account type is POP.
  

If your address is not @earthlink.net then you can look up your exact server names here for any domain we support.

If your software does not allow setting the outgoing port to 587, you can try entering the server name as
      smtpauth.earthlink.net:587
all on that line. If that doesn't work, you will have to use the outgoing mail server provided by your phone provider instead of smtpauth.earthlink.net.

In the future we may provide a WAP site for accessing email from mobile browsers. In the meantime, use any email program on your mobile device instead of the browser.

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User "Ron" (among many others) posted this question to Ask Email Guy:

Can I have my email automatically forwarded to another email address?

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Users wonder if anything really happens when they use the "This Is Spam" feature in Web Mail, since they usually don't see an immediate result. We hope to add some features later that allow you to see reports about the effect of your own reporting. But in the meantime, know that several very useful things do happen, and please continue to use that feature. Here are some of the things that happen when you report a message as spam:

• The IP number of the message origination is automatically checked against public blacklists of known spam sources, and against lists of dynamic IP numbers. A dynamic IP number is one reserved for assignment to individual end-user's computers on a per-connection basis and should never be hosting a mail server that originates messages. So email that comes from a server at a dynamic IP number is almost always being generated by spam-bots on compromised computers (search Google for "bot-net" for more info). When an actual human user sends email they should be sending through a legitimate mail server hosted by their provider, or they host their own mail server on a fixed IP number that they own. So when you report a message as spam, and the originating IP number is found to be a dynamic IP number, that IP number is added to a global block list at EarthLink and no more email is accepted from that IP number. So in these cases, the result of your report is almost immediate. That doesn't mean you won't get more spam from the same sender, since the spammer may use a large bot-net that contains many compromised computers. But at least one source gets blocked, and over time many do. Our IP block list has over 200 million blocked numbers at any given time.

  Note that the IP block described above does NOT result in blocking a real user from sending legitimate email, as they will be using the *outgoing* mail server set in their email software, which is not the same as the mail server where EarthLink accepts incoming email from other servers (MX server). Only connections to the latter are blocked, which doesn't affect anything legitimate that a user is doing, it only blocks the spam-bot mail server running on the unsuspecting user's computer.

• If the originating IP number is found on a public blacklist of known spam sources or open proxies (such as the CBL), your report results in it being blocked from sending any more email to EarthLink users, just as described above.

• The messages you report are compiled and analyzed along with all other reported spam, to create new content-based filtering rules that recognize the characteristics of that particular spam, but in a way that prevents false-positive blocking of legitimate messages. Not every spam report can result in a new rule being created, but when a critical mass of similar spam is reported, it does often result in a new block being created. Once a rule is created, those messages are then flagged as Known Spam for all EarthLink users, and deleted according to your own account settings.

• The total count of reports from the "This Is Spam" feature is closely monitored and tracked, and when we see that number going up or down, we know how effective our efforts are at blocking spam.

So yes, we do act on your reports of "This Is Spam". Please do keep using this feature. And watch for some news later this year about us creating ways to give you more insight into the direct effect of your own reporting.

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I've answered this question enough to warrant adding it to our FAQ list now. There are a couple of pending comments with the question again, so I'll just answer it here for everyone and add it to our FAQ.

Click on "My Account" at the top of any EarthLink page. Log in there with your primary account (might be your only one if you have never done this). Then click on Profiles. Most accounts allow up to eight profiles (mailboxes) with no extra charge.

You can also open Free Email accounts, which will be independent and can't be managed together with your other profiles, and they also have certain restrictions on features and message limits. Sign up here.

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The total allowed message size at EarthLink, including the message text and all attached files, is 10MB. This limit applies to both incoming and outgoing messages, and applies whether you use Web Mail or other email software.

A 10MB limit is used by most major email providers, so even if we allowed larger limits, many of your recipients wouldn't be able to receive the file. Email isn't really a suitable medium for moving around very large files, and was never intended for that use. If you need to give someone a large file, use one of the many free services that let you upload any size file and then email a link to your recipient to retrieve it. Or post the files on your own web site if you have one.

For techies: we also make an allowance for the MIME encoding bloat so that you can actually send or receive a 10MB file. Some services advertise a 10MB limit, but enforce it after MIME encoding, so that you can actually only send about 6.5 MB in attached files on those services. We allow a full 10MB plus a little margin. (MIME just refers to a set of encoding standards used to turn all email content into ASCII text for transport, and the email program on the other end knows how to un-encode it. ASCII basically refers to the set of characters you see on an English keyboard, plus a few others. That's why if you "View Message Source" for an email message with attachments, you see a big block of printable text for your attached files. That's encoded binary data.)

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Users ask for help saving their email address or password on the login page, or help removing a saved email address or password on the login page.

First understand that in addition to the "Remember My Email Login" checkbox feature on the Web Mail login page, your browser also has a form autocomplete feature, and the difference between the two can sometimes be confusing. Your browser has the ability to save all form entries including passwords. Web Mail will never save your password, and only has the option to save your email address.

Leaving the browser feature aside for the moment, here's how the Remember Me feature on the login page works. When you check that option, your email address will be pre-loaded in the login box next time you visit the page. If it isn't working, there are two possible causes:

1. You are blocking or deleting cookies. The only way Web Mail can save this email address for you is by saving a cookie in your browser. You must allow cookies for earthlink.net to be saved. If you subsequently delete all your browser cookies, the saved email address will be lost.
   
2. You may be using an incorrect URL (browser address) to go to Web Mail. You must alway use only "webmail.earthlink.net" for your login page in order for the email address to be remembered. If you are a hosting customer, the correct URL is "webmail.hosting.earthlink.net".

        Continue reading "How do I save (or delete) my login and password?" » »

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When you click on Known Spam you will see a a graph of message counts per day instead of a list of messages. The caption at the top of that screen says,

"All Known spam that is sent to your address is currently being deleted. The graph below shows how much spam has been caught by Known spam Blocking over time."

You can change that setting by clicking on spamBlocker / Settings and scrolling down until you see the setting that says, "Delete Known Spam Immediately" and just change that to Off. Then you will see a message listing similar to other folders when you click on Known Spam. The most recent 100 Known Spam messages up to 10 days old will be saved in that folder. When a message in that folder reaches 10 days old it will be deleted automatically unless you move it to another folder. If the message count goes over 100 in less than 10 days, only the last 100 are saved.

One reason users get confused about the Known Spam folder is because of a bug in the message count shown beside the Known Spam folder name on the main Web Mail page. That is being fixed in the upcoming release. It should always show zero if the messages have been deleted, and should always show the correct count if they are being saved.

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This post is a variation on the "Where Did My Messages Go" article I published a while back, as it warrants publishing again. Also, in an upcoming release of Web Mail, a proactive explanation similar to this is going to be incorporated into the First Time User dialog that comes up the very first time you log in to Web Mail, to try and head off this confusion and make sure users understand it when they begin using Web Mail.

Note: everywhere below that I refer to Outlook or Outlook Express, that applies to any email software you have installed on your computer whether it is EarthLink Mailbox, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc. They are all POP3 email clients and all work the same way.)

In the Web Mail Feedback mailbox (click the Feedback link inside Web Mail), one of the most common sources of questions continues to be users who get confused about the difference between Web Mail and other email software