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* Email Programs * ObieMail * Quota Information * Email filters * SMTP Authentication * SSL

ObieID computer accounts are provided to all faculty, staff, and students. This account provides access to many computer/network resources and services: one's e-mail, oncampus.oberlin.edu (Blackboard) account, network authentication, file server space (personal storage space on a central server), web account (if requested), VPN (secure access application), software downloads, Windows computers on campus (office and lab computers), and Macintosh lab computers (coming soon).

E-Mail Programs:

• ObieMail (webmail client)

Oberlin College uses a webmail program known as ObieMail. With this product, users can access their email from any web browser by going to: https://mail.oberlin.edu and logging in with the applicable ObieID account username and password.

Read more about ObieMail by clicking on this link.

• Client E-mail Programs

  CIT recommends the following mail clients: Mac OS X Mail or Thunderbird for Macs, and Thunderbird for Windows. Any other standard IMAP or POP mail client will work with our mail server but we may not be able to assist with problems. We recommend using IMAP over POP.
  
  Documentation on setting up OS X Mail and Thunderbird (Mac or Windows) are available for download.
  
  Note: We strongly discourage the use of Outlook and Outlook Express due to security and virus issues.

Quota Information: All faculty and staff receive an email quota of 100 MB. All students receive 50 MB. There are various ways to view your quota usage level, depending on what email program you use.

• Thunderbird users can click on a folder (for example, inbox), select Properties, then click on the Quota tab. The amount of quota used will be displayed by percentage used. Since every user just has one quota (inbox and other folders all combine in one user directory), any folder can be selected to see the total quota used.

• Mac OS X Mail users can scroll down past all their folders in the left navigation pane and click on the Shortcuts for commonly used actions button, then select Get Info and click on the Quota Limits tab. This displays total quota info and usage info for each folder.

Email Filters: All incoming email first passes through a spam filter, which drops or quarantines known spam mail, and drops or removes attachments with certain file extensions known to be associated with viruses. Click here for detailed information on the spam filtering process. Once mail passes through this filtering process, it then passes though an anti-virus filter, which checks for viruses and removes any attachments known to be infected. People who have received an attachment found to have a virus will receive a message such as the following:

*** Important message from Oberlin CIT ***

The original document has been removed from this message. The document was removed because a possible virus, or other malicious content, was detected.

Virus found (if any):  name of virus FOUND

The name of the original document was nnnnn.nnn

If you still wish to obtain this document, please contact the original SENDER, asking that they check for viruses and resend.  Contact the Help Desk at x58197 or cit@oberlin.edu if you need any assistance.  Do NOT contact the Help Desk or Postmaster for the deleted attachment, as they will not have access to it.

Please see the CIT website below for further information:

http://www.oberlin.edu/cit/email

Postmaster, Irvin E. Houck Center for Information Technology, Mudd Level A

In addition to server-side filtering, OS X Mail and Thunderbird both provide tools for individual users to set up their own filtering. For example, you may want to filter all messages coming from one particular user into a separate folder. To set up your own individual filters, in Thunderbird, go to Tools -> Message Filters and in OS X Mail, go to Mail -> Preferences and click on the Rules tab. Both programs provide capable assistance through their respective Help menus. You can also contact the CIT Help Desk for assistance (cit@oberlin.edu or x58197).

SMTP Authentication: Our mail server has been set to allow SMTP authentication. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a protocol for sending email messages between servers. Thus, if a user sets up their email client program for SMTP authentication, or uses a webmail program such as ObieMail, they will be authenticated as an Oberlin sender. Click here for more information on SMTP authentication.

SSL: Our mail server also supports a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) login, which encrypts your username and password for added security. Click here for more information on SSL login.