Webmail Policies

Temporary Email Access

Eastex provides Webmail for our customers to access their email while away from home. While other mail providers are primarily accessed using a browser (such as Gmail or Yahoo), Eastex Net email should be accessed primarily with a mail client like Outlook, Apple Mail or Thunderbird.

When a mail client is configured to download messages and remove them from the server, you prevent complications due to a full mailbox (see below). Our customers have access to 1GB of email storage, which is plenty to allow short-term message storage.

A typical use-case for Webmail is while away on vacation or at work without your home computer.

Full Mailbox

When a mailbox is near its limit, a notification email is sent from Postmaster as a warning. Once a mailbox reaches 1GB, it is considered full and can no longer accept new messages. The email sender will receive a bounce message stating the recipient's mailbox is full, and you will not be notified.

After you remove messages from the mail server (either by deleting or downloading them to your computer), you will receive a notification that your mailbox is no longer at its limit or exceeding the quota.

Quarantined messages do not count towards your 1GB quota limit on the server.

Webmail has a modern interface which should be familiar to users of Outlook and other mail clients for desktop.

On the left are your folders. By default, you will have Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Junk, and Trash. If you’ve created additional folders in webmail or from your desktop client using IMAP, you will see those listed.

The middle column is your messages list. It may be sorted any number of ways by clicking the ⚙️. By default it will be sorted by Arrival Time, Descending (newest first).

Displaying Images

To protect your privacy, we have chosen to disable remote image display by default. Those messages displaying remote images will appear with a warning:

You have a couple of options within webmail. You can click Display Images for the current message if you know that the sender is legitimate. If there is an embedded image reporting back to a server, then it will report at this time.

Your next option is to always display images, no matter the sender. This can be found in Settings > Displaying Messages > Display remote inline images > always > Save:

The last option (and what we recommend) is to select ‘from known senders,’ allowing you to see images from contacts in your address book and previous recipients of your email.

Contacts

If you have contacts from another mail system and would like to see those in Webmail, export them as a CSV to your computer. Then Log in to Webmail with your Eastex credentials.

Go to Contacts:

Click Import:

Import from file, choose the CSV, select your options, and click Import.

A message will show which contacts were imported. Click Done.

Your contacts have now been transferred!

Quarantine

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Where is Quarantine?

Quarantine is accessed from the top bar from within Webmail.

You can also go to our support page from the top bar, or if you are deep within settings, click the logo to jump back to your inbox.

 

Quarantine Features

After logging into your quarantine, you have a variety of options:

• Release Mail: Release messages
• Release and Trust: Release and Report messages as Legitimate email
• Delete and Block: This option is new. It deletes the spam and adds the sender to your blocklist, all in one step.
• Delete Mail: Delete and Purge
• Clear All: Delete and Purge without having to check boxes next to each message

Trusted Senders / Block Lists

Your Block List appears as a stop sign at the top of the page. This is where you may edit all senders who automatically get blocked by our filtering:

The Eastex Net Email Server retains messages in Quarantine for seven (7) days before automatically purging those messages. Due to the enormous amount of disk space consumed by the retention of junk email messages for longer periods, this retention period cannot be lengthened.

Quarantined messages do not count towards your 1GB quota limit on the server.

Checking Your Quarantine

You should periodically check quarantine to make sure legitimate messages haven't been blocked from getting to your inbox. If you find a message that should not have been quarantined, check the box next to the message, then click "Release and Trust"

Adding a Sender to Blocklist

To permanently stop receiving email from a certain address, you can add that address to your Blocked List. Click the stop-sign icon at the top, then enter the email address in the top box only, then click the Add button:

WARNING: If you enter a domain in the second box, all emails from that domain will be blocked! For example, if "gmail.com" is entered, then any emails you expect to receive from someone using Gmail will be blocked.

Remove a Blocked Sender

If you find emails in your quarantine that should not be blocked, see if they are on your block list. Click the stop-sign icon in your quarantine, and scroll through the list (it's sorted alphabetically). Once you find the address, click the x on the right-hand side.

Trust a Sender

Opposite of Blocked List is your Trusted List. This is where you can add an address that has been mis-categorized as spam. For example, if you prefer to receive newsletters from an organization or business, those will typically get blocked. Simply click the checkbox next to the message, then Release and Trust. You can view the Trusted List by going to the shield icon next to the stop-sign.

If you are receiving emails that should be categorized as spam, check your Trusted List to see if the address is allowed. If so, click the x next to the address to remove it.

Background

If you use Webmail along with other email clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird, there may be folders created by your mail client which are not visible in Webmail. These folders could contain deleted messages consuming your mailbox quota without your knowledge, leading to alert emails stating your mailbox is almost full.

A Short Explanation

Eastex supports two mailbox protocols: IMAP and POP3. With IMAP, all messages and folders are stored on the mail server. When a mail client is configured to check Eastex email, it will create special folders such as Drafts, Trash, Sent, etc. This is perfectly normal, and something all mail clients do. However, if any of these special folders have a different name than those already created by our Webmail system (INBOX, Drafts, Sent, Junk, Trash), those folders may be hidden within Webmail.

The Problem

As an example, if you receive an alert your mailbox is approaching the quota limit, you may open Outlook and delete a bunch of old messages. Outlook will “delete” these messages by moving them to the Deleted Items folder. The next morning you check your email, and you’ve received another message from us saying your mailbox is nearly full. What happened?

The Fix

Outlook (and Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc.) didn’t actually delete the message. It simply moved the message to another folder. In order to truly delete the message, you must empty the trash. There is commonly a setting you can check to empty trash daily, weekly, or upon closing the mail software - check your mail client documentation for details on how to set this up.

In Webmail, you can see these hidden folders after changing a setting. After logging in, go to Settings → Folders. All folders stored using IMAP on the server are displayed. Look for any folders without a check next to them, and check the box.

Checking the box will subscribe to those IMAP folders within Webmail, allowing you to see them in the left column of your mailbox. Once they are checked, you can then delete messages from that folder and empty the Trash.

Additional Info

If you prefer to use the Deleted Items folder instead of Trash so that Webmail aligns with your mail client, this is easily accomplished with a couple settings.

First, make sure you are subscribed to the Deleted Items folder (see above)

Then, go to Settings → Preferences → Special Folders

Change the Trash dropdown to your preference:

Click Save.

Now Webmail will use the Deleted Items IMAP folder (instead of Trash) while viewing Trash in your mailbox.