NIU Math Help - Mail clients for the home

NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences
Mail clients for the home

Introduction

For those who prefer to read and compose mail on their Mac or PC, whether at home or in the office, we recommend Eudora from Quaulcomm over Microsoft Outlook because Eudora is much less tightly integrated with the operating system, and is thus less likely to be exploited by hackers, viruses and worms. However, you can also use the mail component in Netscape, or MS Outlook.

There are two aspects of using a mail client of this type which are a concern from the security viewpoint: first, any modern mail program which understands MIME will normally download all attachments to your local disk, where they can do damage. Please keep your antivirus software up to date, and be very suspicious of all attachments, even if they seem to come from trusted senders.

Second, the two most popular methods for transferring e-mail from the "post office" (mail server) to the "mailbox in the driveway" (your PC) are insecure in that they transmit everything, including passwords and the content of messages, in clear text. This can be alleviated by configuring the software to use SSL, as described below.

Basic configuration

Start the mail program. Select "Settings" from the "Special" menu (Eudora). There are many groups of options in there. Here is a list of the most important ones as they appear in Eudora; other clients have similar settings, but their names may be a bit different:

Getting started
   Username: your login name on our system
   Mail server: mail.math.niu.edu
   Real name: whatever you wish
   SMTP server: your network provider's mail machine, e.g. mail.attbi.net
     if you are dialing in through NIU, enter mail.math.niu.edu here
   Return address: your_login_name@math.niu.edu

Checking mail
   Mail protocol: see comments [1] below
   Save password: check this if the computer isn't used by others
   Check mail every ... minutes: leave blank to use manual mail checking, or enter (at least) 10
   Leave mail on server: see comments [2] below

Attachments
in Eudora, select "AppleDouble (MIME)"

Message formatting and replying
Despite the current trend imposed by Outlook and Netscape default settings, please follow the long-standing Internet tradition and use "start my reply below quoted text". Also find the setting which controls what formatting the messages use, and disable HTML, leaving only text. HTML mail might be more attractive to the eye, but is a source of problems too numerous to list here.

Comments [1] POP is more common, but quite primitive. IMAP is more powerful, letting you synchronize multiple mailboxes etc. But it is also more difficult to implement correctly, and most IMAP clients have bad bugs. Unless you are a power user who is taking advantages of the extra features of IMAP, I suggest using POP.

[2] If you are using Eudora both at home and in the office, you may want to check the "keep mail on server" box and enter "4" or so days so that you can get at the messages from the second location even if you have already downloaded them from the first one.

If you use Eudora in only one place, and do not ever log in to the Suns to read mail, then you should leave the box unchecked.

Security

Both IMAP and POP can use an extension of the older protocols - so called SSL, or "secure sockets layer", which guarantees the identity of the server (so you know your e-mail isn't going through an evil impostor's server), and strong encryption (so eavesdroppers along the way won't have any luck grabbing your password or reading your letters). We strongly encourage everyone to use this protocol.

This setting is found in various places in different clients. In Eudora there is a separate settings group called SSL, in which you should select "required, alternate port" under POP and IMAP (but not SMTP). In Outlook and Netscape this will be a choice somewhere near the place where you define the POP or IMAP ("incoming mail") server. Do not select SSL near the place where you define SMTP ("outgoing mail") server.

After making this change you will get an error message that states "SSL Negotiation failed"; this is because Eudora doesn't recognize our in-house generated SSL certificate. To fix this, go to Tools, then Options, click Checking Mail, then click "Last SSL Info" and finally "Certificate Information Manager". If you see a certificate (issued by "NIU Math" or similar) with a skull image to left of it, that means the certificate is not trusted. To make it trusted, click "Add to Trusted". From now on you should be able to check e-mail as before, only using an encrypted connetcion.

Glitches

Miscellaneous

If you don't have Eudora but would like to install it, use a browser to connect to the Eudora Web site. Choose your operating system (Windows or Mac), and download the software. Installation is quite standard.

The software has three "modes": "sponsored" (free, full features, with pop-up ads); "paid" (full features, no ads after you pay the vendor), and "light" (free, no ads, but reduced features). On the one hand I would very much like Qualcomm to continue developing Eudora, so I urge everyone to pay the modest price for the paid version. On the other hand, a typical user will be just as happy with the reduced features as with the paid extras...

After you start Eudora, you can select the "mode" by going to the last menu (Help) and selecting "Payment and Registration".