System Upgrade - Thunderbird email
Sept 10,2006
Thunderbird is a free email reader.
By default
- External images are blocked
- This is very good because spammers place images in their emails so that they can
identify your address as valid and that the email was read.
However, internal (MIME encoded) images still display - you should disable this
- All emails are downloaded from your POP3 server
- Not so good - I prefer to leave email online for 60 days so that I can
access it (via a web based email reader) from anyplace
- New emails are formatted as html
- This is very bad - be sure to change this to text only.
Many email lists do not allow any email except text only.
Also, some spam checkers automatically interpret embedded html tags to be a flag for spam
(a very good idea)
- Forwarded email is sent as an attachment
- This is very bad - Under Tools / Options / Composition / General
set Forward messages inline. This allows you to remove junk headers and empty space from the
forwarded message. Also, many people will not open ANY attachments because there is no way
to tell good attachments from viruses.
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Features
Installation
It was actually very easy, just download and run
Thunderbird.
Configuration
In order to use any email program,
you must specify
- Incoming mail server (POP3 or IMAP)
- Outgoing mail server (SMTP)
The details vary (considerably) and you will probably have to try several
things before it actually works.
Generally, you will be given 2 url's -
one POP3 and one SMTP.
Notice that the POP3 and SMTP URLs do not need to be the same ...
it just depends.
Each server will have its own login ID and password.
Most email programs allow you to configure several POP3 addresses, but only one SMTP address.
POP3
POP3 - Post Office Protocol, version 3 - is a protocol used to
read email.
To read mail, your email client (in this case Thunderbird)
needs the URL of the POP3 server (Thunderbird allows several).
Typically, the "username" must be the fully qualified email address
username@mysite.com
Note: AOL does not use POP3 - that means that you can NOT get email
using a standard program.
SMTP
SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol - is a format used to send email.
An SMTP server receives emails sent from your email client (in this case Thunderbird) and sends them
to the server (URL) specified in the address(es).
To send email
- The SMPT server must be configured to accept email from another site -
sometimes referred to as Outgoing Mail - SMTP Relaying.
This security method is used to limit the amount of spam that can be sent
via a remote connection.
- Thunderbird must be given the URL of the SMTP server
- Logon name and password
I have had problems with the username - a simple username typically does not work -
you normally also need to include your URL, such as
username@mysite.com
Notice that this is NOT the same URL as the SMTP URL.
Also notice that the "at sign" (@) and URL were a required part of the "username"
(this is the part that was NOT clear).
Playing with the Configuration
Warning: The provided help places many of these options in different locations -
yet another reason not to use this application.
Images
By default, external images are blocked and internal (MIME encoded) images are not.
Displaying external images is very bad because spammers use images to
identify your address as valid and to verify that the email was read - an
appropriately named image will makes this very easy.
Of particular concern are hidden images (usually 1 pixel by one pixel) -
they are the same color as the background and so small that most people will
not notice them.
The following option (set by default) only blocks remote images
Tools / options... / Privacy / General
Block loading of remote images in mail messages
(By the way, the provided help places this option in a different location.)
There is a possibility that some images may be included inside the email message.
Supposedly, displaying those will NOT tell the spammer that you actually exist.
However, it is possible that the imbedded images might be offensive
(porn, massacres, ads, whatever) and I want to absolutely block ALL images
until I explicitly allow them.
You can verify that the images are internal by using
View / Message Source
You can disable images by selecting
View / Message Body As / Plain Text
This still uses the internal html formatting ... but does not display any images :)
(the default is Original HTML)
Author: Robert Clemenzi -
clemenzi@cpcug.org