Skip navigation, view page content.

Begin OSU masthead and toolbar

Begin Sociology header and quick links

  1. Sociology Webmail
  2. Department Calendar
  3. Remote Access (VPN)
  4. Department Intranet
  1. American Sociological Review
  2. Criminal Justice Research Center
  3. Initiative in Population Research
  4. Departmental Computing
  1. Sociology Courses
  2. Office Hours
  3. Our Newsletter
  4. Make A Gift


Begin Sociology main navigation menu.

Bricker Hall

The Department of Sociology Address:

300 Bricker Hall
190 N. Oval Mall
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone: (614) 292.6681
Fax: (614) 292.6687

Begin related content to this page or sub-navigation menu.

System Links

Begin related content to this page or sub-navigation menu.

Related Content

Begin the main content of this page.

Sociology E-Mail FAQ

Sociology operates a mail server for its graduate students, faculty and staff. We support Eudora access to the server, but other e-mail clients may be used outside the department. We also have a new webmail interface which can access the mail on the server. Our server has some protection against incoming "possibly hazardous-to-your-pc" content and implements virus checking during mail reception. We also try to identify possible "spam" and provide tags in the headers to mark possible spam or bulk messages for later special handling by mail client filters.

Here is a FAQ-style interaction providing further information:

  • Q. I often e-mail myself large files (4mbs--zipped)...can I still do this?
  • A. Yes. Zipping your files is the way to go if you attach them. In fact, we reject many inbound file types if not contained in a ".zip" archive, because those file types are typical of virus-infected attachments.
  • Q. Will the Sociology mail system be more reliable than OIT (missing e-mails)?
  • A. I've only seen totally dropped e-mails happen occasionally with OIT, but they have definitely gone missing a few times. Historically the forwarding speed of the OIT system has also been source of disappointment. Occasionally OIT has bounced messages back to the sender, which is better than completely dropping the messages, but less good than actually delivering them. The goal is more reliable. I think yes. Their hardware is more robust in some ways, but their software and management has been variable. We could have a hardware failure or other problem that could cause a loss of messages. We try hard but are also fallible.
  • Q. Can I send larger files (like 10mbs)?
  • A. Yes, but not everyone in the world uses a mail server that will accept the attachment.. Sending to yourself should be okay. Aim for less than 100 Megabytes in storage and in a single message inbound or outbound. Also, your file when encoded will take about 20% more space than the actual file before sending (rough estimate). Please feel free to see us in the lab if you have special requirements for file transfers. Hope the 100 megs does it for you.
  • Q. Can I have a personalized handle like "wonderful_sociologist@sociology.osu.edu"? (ok, just kidding).
  • A. Yes, sort of. There's an under-advertised feature. In addition to being name.number@sociology.osu.edu, you can also use your initials or your initials followed by a hyphen followed by your wonderful_sociologist text, and it will get to you. So if you are login user initials "ini" you could use ini-palm@sociology.osu.edu when registering software with palm, for example. I have a changeable Eudora personality and I modify the "Return Address" for this one when I want to originate with something different than my standard address. So you could use ini-wonderful_sociologist@sociology.osu.edu, yes.
  • Q. Could you tell me about virus checking?
  • A. We maintain policies on the mail server to reduce the chance of e-mails with dangerous payloads, and we run virus checking software as messages arrive at the mail server. However, hazardous messages can still come through if they haven't been identified and treated by the company that makes our virus protection software. We hope you are running and keeping up to date with a virus scanner and applying operating system updates to your home PC. The university has a site license for antiviral software, freely available to students, staff and faculty. Mistrust of mail content can also be helpful.

    Aditionally, our mail server will reject certain attachment file types and content. Dangerous content we try to reject includes executable programs and scripts. Additionally, the mail servers' virus scanner can try to identify dangerous content and take action to block the message. If it is likely the sender address is valid (that is, the virus' sender has not specified a false sender address), the server tries to inform the sender of content rejection. If a file has made it this far, the server also may modify the suffix of the file to discourage execution.

    We recommend that you and your colleagues use non-executable zip archives (".zip" files) for sending files as attachments..ZIP files are not rejected if they appear to be free of viruses. Zip archives are almost always smaller than their constituent files, and they have a 'checksum' feature that can indicate whether a file was corrupted in transit.
  • Q. Could you provide more detail? I'm kind of a techie and curious.
  • A. Sure. The server rejects attachments if they are identified as being a windows executable.

    The server scans e-mails to check for known viruses, and blocks known viruses. Senders addresses may be notified when believed appropriate.

    If the message gets this far and the attachment is a dangerous type as indicated by a filename suffix lookup, the server bounces it back with a notice to the sender address that the file type is rejected. The sender will get a note in this case that we do accept .zip files.

    We do a second check of file suffixes in attachment. If a dangerous file type gets this far, it may be renamed with an additional ".txt" attachment name.

    The mechanisms we use are subject to change.
  • Q. It seems I get a lot of spam. Can you help?
  • A. We do try to identify for you messages which are bulk or spam, and we insert some special "tag" lines into the header of the message. You can then use filtering to handle these messages if you choose. We recommend that you consider moving the identified messages to a separate mailbox named something like "likely-spam" or "spam-or-bulk-maybe" and review the contents from time to time. It is possible that the detection misidentifies a message, so you might otherwise miss a "real" message if you don't review those messages for "false positives".

    Add a filter to your mail program to identify messages with a mail header line starting with "X-OSUSOC:" and move that message to a special "likely-spam" mailbox or folder. Please see instructions for configuring a Eudora spam filter.

    The "X-OSUSOC:" header is our summary tag for our anti-spam lookups and will appear with a message that apparently matched one of our bulk or real-time block list (RBL) report conditions described here. An example is: "X-OSUSOC: BULK MATCH, URI BLOCKLIST MATCH, IP BLOCKLIST MATCH."

    If you want to look a bit deeper than the summary tag, there are several report tags which may appear. The "X-BULK-REPORT:" header indicates a mathematical content match in a lookup against one of two databases of much received messages. It will appear for messages that contain content that have been received by many others on the Internet. Note that desired messages such as newsletters, commerce transaction reports and mail news services can be classified as bulk. In another type of analysis the "X-RBL-REPORT:" and "X-XBL-REPORT:" header tags appear when our lookup routines suggest that the Internet source of the message appears in a lookup against a set of "blacklists" of sources of Internet spam and poorly administered servers. These header tags essentially tell you the mail item appears to comes from a "tainted" Internet address. Yet another analysis report tag which can appear is the "X-URI-REPORT:" which displays when the content of the message contains a link which matches a universal resource identifier (uri) blacklist.

    Our header tags can be strategically used in combination with other filtering techniques to help you manage your messages. Mail client filters, such as those available in Eudora, can be used to modify message display or redirect messages into special mailboxes. Server side filtering is also possible and is particularly is effective when using the imap protocol from more than one client location. Server side filter management is available via our webmail interface. On some mail clients it is also possible to use bayesian text analysis to provide yet another layer of defense against spam. We welcome you to talk with SRL staff about any of these options, so that you can get the best use from them.

    For users of our departmental webmail, we now display indicators of which tests have matched. You will see "B" for bulk and "S" for RBL matches in the mailbox view of your messages.

    Please be aware these indicators as provided can be "wrong" in some instances. Spam tagged messages may well be spam, yet might not be. The message was believed to be sourced by an Internet address associated with spamming activity, badly managed or with a history of abuse. It could also contain a http link believed to be associated with spam or other suspecious activity. You may find some false positives - non spam classified as spam, so consider that possibility. The bulk indicator means this general message form has been seen by multiples of mail servers on the network. You probably do want some of these mass forms of contact, so don't always view a "bulk hit" as indicating the message is surely undesirable. Messages such as subscribed news alerts, vendor transaction notifications or offers, postings from professional organizations and items sent via large mailing lists typically will classify as bulk upon arrival. You might consider creating an ordered set of mail filters acting upon desired sources of bulk messages in order to "whitelist" that set of messages.

    If you are curious about some of these methods, you can find more information while researching "dcc" "razor" "rbl" "spam filtering". The mail headers of your tagged messages will also provide more information.
  • Q. I'm using Eudora. Do you have some configuration suggestions for me?
  • A. Yes. In Eudora's tools menu there is a choice called "options". From here you can modify some of Eudora's behavior.

    For added protection against e-mail viruses: Under "Viewing Mail" UNSELECT "allow executables in HTML content". Under "Extra warnings" be sure to select "Launch a program from a message".

    To keep things simple: under "viewing mail" UNSELECT "Use Microsoft's viewer". under "Display" UNSELECT "automatically download HTML graphics".

    Other possibilities include: "Styled Text" When sending mail with styled text (HTML): select Send plain text only. and select "Ask me each time".

    why? some mail programs don't display styled text well. Simple is often better in getting your message across. Overly flashy text distracts. If you do have styled text in your message, you will get a notice to this effect, and you can choose to send the message with both plain and styled formats included.

    Under "Attachments" enter the attachment directory you prefer. In the lab the default is x:\eudora\attach and you can specify this explicitly.

    Recent Eudora versions have "mood watch" which I choose to disable. "Mood watch" UNSELECT "Enable MoodWatch". Mood watch provides content scanning, attempting to identify offensive language.

    With version 6.0 of Eudora, the program introduces Bayesian filtering to attempt to classify junk mail as such. It is part of their "SpamWatch" functionality. If you like to tinker, you can try this new feature at home. We don't use version 6.0 in the lab yet. We have had mixed success with this version during testing, and we recommend version 5.2 (without SpamWatch) to our users desiring stability.

    If you do choose enable or disable SpamWatch under Windows Eudora v6.0, go to Tools: Options: Junk Mail and modify the checkbox next to "Automatically place junk in Junk mailbox".

    Under "Incoming Mail", if you are using POP and you have a computer at home (in addition to checking mail from sociology computers) you should probably select "leave mail on server" and "Delete from server after 7 days". This will allow you to collect all your incoming messages from both school and work, assuming you check at home and from the SRL computers at least once a week. Please ask the lab staff if you have questions about what multiple-computer configuration might work best for you.

    By the way, we can also have the mail server generate a "vacation" message as an automatic reply to your incoming messages while you are away. It can send a standard message of some type as new sender messages are received. It tries to be smart and not reply to list messages. It won't tell an address more than once a week that you are not actively checking messages.

    An example automated reply might look like this...

    --- Subject: - away from my mail

    This is an automated message.

    I will not be reading my mail for a while.

    Your mail regarding "incoming mail subject" will be read when I return.

    lastname.#@sociology.osu.edu
    ---

    Please ask someone in the Lab if you are interested in this feature.
  • Q. I'm going to be at another university for a quarter. Can you forward messages to another mail address for me temporarily?
  • A. Yes, we can do that. We can forward messages to other mail addresses. It's a good idea to talk to us about your specific needs, so we can configure aspects of the forwarding to best meet your needs.
  • Q. I really like receiving messages on webmail interface of a commercial provider (yahoo, Hotmail, etc). May I configure things to check Sociology mail from there?
  • A. While it is often technically possible to "pop" check your sociology mail storage from a remote "foreign" mail service, it is a bad idea. What you are doing in effect is providing your Sociology account and password to another Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is not a good idea. You should not be put in a position where you password is known or stored by outside systems. Only you should know your password.

    One alternative is that we could forward your messages to that ISP. If we do this, we also prefer to send messages to your sociology server storage too, so you get it both places. Often your ISP can bounce messages and if we don't have the sociology server active for your storage, you may not find you have reliability problems with that ISP.

    We do prefer that you use a system we can directly support. Using Eudora or Sociology webmail allows us to serve you better.
  • Q. I'm going on a trip and would like to check my mail from my friend's home or a library or something. Can I do that?
  • A. We have a webmail service. You can login and check your inbox and reply to messages. It works much like other webmail interfaces, only it works directly with the Sociology mail server. The messages in the inbox folder are the same messages that your Eudora POP collection will download. You may want to modify your settings for Eudora if you plan on using both Eudora and webmail a lot. Please talk to one of the staff in the SRL to find what settings might be best for you.
  • Q. What is the web address and what are some of the features of the webmail server?
  • A. http://webmail.sociology.ohio-state.edu is the standard access point for the webmail server. Your login dialog will be encrypted. If you want your entire session to be encrypted over the Internet, you can access the webmail server with https://webmail.sociology.ohio-state.edu. The system we are running is based on the Squirrelmail program with some other features we have chosen to add.

    I mentioned the sign-on mechanism is encrypted. You are not sending your password over the Internet unencrypted which is good. Other services providing webmail, when used with our server, provides the password to that service, which is not good for your account security. When you connect to our web server, you will get a security message which should say the server security date is valid and the certificate matches the web page. You can click YES to proceed.

    Once on here are some features you might be interested in...

    There is a simple spell check feature. It is not as nice as Eudora's dynamic spell checking, but you can submit your text message for review by a spell checker. (If you prefer dynamic spell checking, compose your message with Word or a similar word processor and copy/paste the completed text into webmail).

    You can prepare some filters for special handling of message by criterion you select.

    There is an address book capability available. An import and export function is available which you may find useful. There is auto-complete address functionality which also uses the address book data.

    You can select messages to download to your PC as a zip file. This is the "archive" feature.

    You can set many preferences, including display preferences, message highlighting, and possibly helpful things like specifying an "auto carbon-copy (Cc)" address.

    Our Squirrelmail webmail server is using the IMAP protocol to access the mail located on the Sociology mail server. Messages removed from the server during Eudora POP sessions will not be available to the webmail interface. As mentioned earlier, please talk to one of the lab staff if you have questions about how to best utilize webmail and Eudora for your needs.