EMAIL ISSUES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TABLE OF CONTENTS NEW POLICY WITH RESPECT TO EMAIL ADDRESSES A NECESSARY EMAIL SETTING WHY OUR EMAILS POSSIBLY ARRIVED LATE OR NOT AT ALL STOP USING YAHOO, NETZERO, AND JUNO EMAIL PROVIDERS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - NEW POLICY WITH RESPECT TO EMAIL ADDRESSES: There are two important issues here. FIRST, members must not supply CFIC with their company email addresses. That is, companies that they work for. (If you own the company, that's different.) All email on a company's server can be read by any supervisor. All it takes is one pro vaccine activist to get hold of our mobilization alerts to throw a monkey wrench in all of our efforts. Thus, do not supply me with a company email address. We can help you get an alternative to that if necesary. SECONDLY, CFIC needs members' email addresses to supply important information to mobilize parents to do things that advances our goal to enact our legislative reforms of the exemptions from vaccination. That has always been CFIC's sole agenda. CFIC has been able to keep the membership fee to zero because we don't communicate via snail mail. But people change their addresses frequently and forget to update CFIC. When this happens over the years, that member is essentually blind and deaf to us, and is no longer of any value to the coalition---your fellow parents. Therefore, it warrants me to require that members supply CFIC with their most permanent email account. That means the email address of the company in which you are paying a monthly fee for internet access, be it broadband or dialup service. That would be, for example, [email protected], or [email protected]. or [email protected], or [email protected], etc. (The internet service provider that you pay for each month bundles email service along with your internet access service.) If you have non-free accounts like these, then please DO NOT supply me with a free email address such as Hotmail, or Yahoo, or gmail, etc. Because these types of accounts are more frequently changed or discarded, and are more likely to place restrictions or other inconveniences for users. If you happen to prefer the online webmail user interface of your free email account, OVER the webmail user interface of your non-free account that you have, then that's only because you don't know that you can install your own email client (i.e. program) on your computer and with it, have total control of the management of your email---and do so with far greater speed and features than by using any online webmail interfaces---even the popular free Yahoo email interface (read more about Yahoo in the next section). There are many email programs available to computer users. Some are free. I recommend Courier Email Client. It is easy to use yet powerful. Just go to the Rose City Software link below, and download and install the program. http://www.rosecitysoftware.com/courier/ You'll just need to enter the correct "mail server name" in the account properties, in order to interface the Courier program with your ISP's email server. (you can get that info from your ISP's website---the one you pay a monthly fee to. Note: Not all free email accounts will permit you to use your own email client.) Also, if you happen to select Courier as your email program, then you will be using "IMAP", and not "POP", as your interfacing method. But either way, you'll now be in total control of your email, and be able to work faster! (Courier had full drag and drop functionality with Windows Explorer, and any other desktop file manager. And it has a very powerful email filtering system.) Another advantage of using an email client like Courier installed on your computer is that it enables you to effectively manage all of your email from different accounts. For example, I have a gmail (from Google) account, and I set the gmail preference settings to forward all inbound mail to my primary account at NYCT, which in turn is downloaded to my Courier email program. I realize that Fedora's Thunderbird is a more popular alternative to Microsoft's Outlook. It's OK to use it. But just bear in mind that by being popular, a software program is more likely a target for black hat hackers. So if you want to continually track Fedora announcements of security vulnerabilities for Thunderbird at Secunia.com-- -and patches for them---be my guest. AN IMPORTANT EMAIL SETTING Sometimes I get an email from someone in which the text appears compressed, with no extra spaces and line feeds. Other times such a message appears to be blank. The reason this happens is because the sender had composed the email message in html language. But it is unnecessary to compose simple email messages in that fancy language. And most people like me set our defaults to receive messages in plain text only, because it's a security measure (html embedded links can cause problems). Fortunately, I can toggle to html mode to view these messages, but only if I diagnose the problem. But many people who receive your emails may not know this stuff and just delete your messages, assuming it was blank or an error. THEREFORE, I recommend that you set your defaults to compose messages in plain text in your email client or webmail interface. If you use hotmail for example, look for this setting: “When sending messages in HTML format and one or more recipients are not listed as being able to receive HTML” Then for that entry, you select this command: "Convert the message to plain text." Just remember that weird things happen when you send email messages in anything but plain simple text mode. WHY OUR EMAILS POSSIBLY ARRIVED LATE OR NOT AT ALL There are 2 basic reasons why you may not have received the aforementioned email package. PLEASE read the following BEFORE calling me to inquire about why you didn't get my email. Especially if you use a YAHOO email account. Reason 1: Low available room in your email box. Consider CFIC's introductory email package that consists of 5 emails: email #1 = 4 kb email #2 = 60 kb email #3 = 1500 kb (1.5 MB) email #4 = 7800 kb (7.8 MB) email #5 = 900 kb (0.9 MB) Many email accounts these days permit you to store up to a gigabyte of mail, with a 10 MB ceiling per email. But many do not, and regardless, whatever amount you're given can ultimately be used up over time. So the information I sent to you may be blocked for lack of available space. The solutions may be to manually clear out unneeded or old emails you're storing in that email account, or to open another email account. (see help on that below.) ALSO, some webmail services and ISPs (ISP="internet service provider") restrict you to less than 10 MB for each email you can send or receive. Netzero and Juno are such examples. If you cannot find a way around that, you must obtain another email account. See further down to learn how easy that is. Some webmail servers provide users with an interface to enable them to control how much or how long inbound spam may accumulate in their spam folder. Or they let you set controls on the level of aggressiveness that the ISP will screen (for spam) inbound mail. I recommend that you set all your anti-spam controls to keep the amount that builds up to a minimum. Let's face it, if you're too lazy to review the mail in your spam box every 2 days, you're not likely going to check it every 5 days. So set your controls to automatically delete the suspect mail every 1-2 days. 2 Reason 2: Anti-Spam Policies and Controls. "Spam" is unsolicited junkmail or malware. The second most common reason you may not receive CFIC email alerts is due to the anti-spam policies of your ISP or your email client. (a) Measures Under Your Control: People who manage their email using a program ("client") resident on their computer usually have program controls that can filter out spam in different ways. What they may not realize is that they also have the same powers to control where inbound mail ends up as people who use webmail interfaces, like aol or gmail. (a webmail interface is simply the proprietary webpage you browse to when you want to read your email.) Therefore, everyone who has email service can perform the following tasks to ensure that my emails get to them: FIRST, Place "[email protected]" on your white list. A "whitelist" is simply the filter setting you use to unconditionally direct an email towards your inbox. You can set the filter for different email characteristics to look for, including the email source (ie, my email address). These links help their readers with their "whitelist" settings for whatever ISP or email client they're using. It should help you to place [email protected] on your white list: http://www.bizweb2000.com/PrivateCoaching/EmailWhiteList/cms/whiteList.html http://www.hypnosisonline.com.au/cmsi/EmailWhiteList/cms/whiteList.html SECOND, make sure that the white list setting (above) overrides any possible global controls that you may have set up to block certain emails, such as emails with file attachments, or emails that are above a threshold size limit. If it doesn't override any such global restrictions, then ease the restrictions.