Email

Most users of electronic mail want to be able to read and send mail no matter where they are, at home or school, when they travel, or in non-traditional work and study settings. NCSU supports the IMAP protocol, which stores mail in individual user accounts on campus mail servers, and a mail program called NCSU Webmail, which allows users to access their mail through a web browser from anywhere in the world. Users do not have to come to campus to use specific mail clients or download their mail to a local computer in order to read it.

Your university provided email address is your unityID@ncsu.edu.  You can also use unityID@unity.ncsu.edu and as an engineering student – unityID@eos.ncsu.edu.  All three of these are the same email address but just written differently.  Email sent to either one will be delivered to the same place.

Webmail

NC State early on recognized the need for students and faculty to be able to access their email on the go.  NC State’s current mobile email solution, Webmail, is built on a standards-based webmail package called SquirrelMail, which lets you access your mail from anywhere using a web browser. SquirrelMail has built-in support for the IMAP and SMTP protocols. All pages render in HTML 4.0 (no JavaScript required) for compatibility across browsers. You can move among computers and get to your mail from different places. All you need is a current web browser with cookies enabled. You log in to Webmail with your Unity ID and password at:

http://webmail.ncsu.edu/

Email Fields

Regardless of the email client you may use, there are certain fields that must and others than can be filled out in order to effectively deliver an email message.

To: - Enter mail address of the person(s) to whom you are sending the message.  Enter as many addresses as you like, usually separated by commas

CC: - Carbon Copy. To send others a copy of the mail, enter their email addresses here. 

BCC: - Blind Carbon Copy. To send others a copy of the mail without the recipients in the To: or Cc: fields knowing about it, enter their email addresses here. 

Subject - Enter relevant heading that accurately describes the message contents.

Appropriate Use

Many users have mail accounts through AOL, HotMail, etc. Your mail can be sent  to these other mail providers if you prefer.  However, remember that you will be on campus for a long time, so consider the benefits of a free and long-term campus mail account.  You get more quota and can send and receive larger mail attachments than you can with most service providers.  Plus, you receive local support. 

A good solution is to keep your email service-provider account for personal use.  Use your yahoo/hotmail/gmail account for your daily internet use (subscribing to forums, online newsletters, etc.). Use your Unity email for academic purposes only. You will get less spam into your Unity mail account and reduce the chance of missing important communications from your professors, classmates, and, eventually, from prospective employers, who prefer communicating with unityid@ncsu.edu than with skiptomyloo@hotmail.com or mydarling@gmail.com.

E115 requires the use of your NCSU email account. Any email/assignment received by your E115 instructor should originate from your NCSU email account or it risks automatic deletion.

Avoiding Spam

Spam is unwanted junk email. The campus email administrators filter mail to remove as much spam as they can and to prevent the spread of viruses. However, individuals can protect themselves from viruses and spam by following the advice below:

• Do not reply to spammers, and do not become a spammer yourself by broadcasting mail, see http://www.ncsu.edu/rulesregs/.
• Do not post your email address on web pages. Do not give out the email addresses of others when web pages ask for them. Be careful with free email accounts, email groups, web hosting, open lists, shareware, etc. All want your email address. Keep a personal email for non-NCSU activities. Keep your NCSU mail address as private as possible. 
• Before opening an email attachment, scan it to ensure that it is not infected. If you do not know the source of a file, do not open it. Even if you know the person who sent you a file, if you were not expecting it, you may want to contact them before opening it. Many viruses automatically send themselves out to addresses they find in files on the infected computer.

NCSU implements a number of strategies and technologies to prevent spam and viruses from getting to you.

• Manages block lists for the campus mail relays to stop viruses, mail loops, bad hosts, and spam directed at our entire user installation. 
• Periodically scans the network for machines accepting mail and performs third party (open) relay checks. 

The campus has also licensed Symantec's Norton AntiVirus and PureMessage for NCSU faculty, staff, and students to help them fight spam and viruses on their work and home computers.

Filtering/Blocking Spam using PureMessage

Adapted from http://www.ncsu.edu/it/essentials/email_messaging/pure_message/. PureMessage is a mail filtering agent that attempts to identify spam and viruses. When an email passes through NCSU's mail relay system, it is processed by the PureMessage daemon, which attempts to determine if it is spam or contains a virus. If an email message satisfies one or more of the definitions used by PureMessage, it is assigned a hits percentage. The greater the percentage, the more likely it is that the message is spam or virus-contaminated.

PureMessage automatically quarantines an attachment that is infected with a known virus, replacing it with text that explains why the attachment was removed. Because a message may have been legitimate except for a virus-infected attachment, PureMessage removes only the infected attachment, not the message itself. Similarly, PureMessage is configured to identify spam but not to delete it automatically. Users must manage their own filters to sort and remove what they do not want.

Until recently, users could only set up filters in the email programs (clients) they used. The web site above provides instructions on how to do filter setup in specific email clients. However, recently, it became possible to set up filters on the server, and this option offers significant advantages. The main advantage is that you can move among mail clients without setting up or changing filters because messages are filtered at the server level and never get to your client.

To enable server-side filtering of spam using the campus PureMessage service:

• Point your web browser to NCSU WebMail at http://webmail.ncsu.edu.
• Log in using your Unity login ID and password.
• In the main message window, click on the Filters option at the top of the page.
• Click on the Add a New Rule button.
• Under Condition, select Header Match from the Rule Type menu.
• Select X-Spam-Flag: as the header, leave contains as the comparison, and type in “YES” in the last field. The condition should now read, "The header X-Spam-Flag: contains YES."
• Under Action, select the Move message into option. If you already have a folder for spam, choose that folder under the existing folder. If you need to create a folder, select a new folder, named and type a name for whatever you would like your junk mail folder to be called e.g., Spam.
• Select the checkbox next to the stop sign to stop further filtering of spam messages.
• Click the button, Add New Rule.

If you get unwanted mail and wish to report it, please send it to the correct place:

• If the spam was generated on-campus (as determined by its headers), forward it to abuse@ncsu.edu.
• If it was generated off-campus, forward it, with full headers, to spam@ncsu.edu.