Each year, we publish what we plan to do over the course of the year. You can see what we set out to do last year in our Plans for 2007 post and what we actually did in our update. We might have bitten off more than we could chew…
Here is a quick review of last year and a view of our plans for the next 12 months. So read on to find out what’s coming up More…
It’s been a while since we last provided an update about our anti-spam platform back at the beginning of February. Since then you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s all been a bit quiet on spam front, but rest assured we’ve definitely not been been resting on our laurels. Over the last two months our developers and network engineers have been busy beavering away at the configuration, code and script changes that will allow us to introduce the functionality promised when we last blogged about the subject.
Back in July some customers may remember reading a commitment that was made in one of my Email/Antispam updates that made reference to the introduction of spam and not spam buttons to our SquirrelMail webmail interface.
This was something that was raised as a suggestion way back in December last year by the UserGroup using their Issue Tracker.
It’s also one of the most requested features when we’ve asked our customers how we could improve our Webmail service.
Those who have seen the Usergroup Exclusive will already have heard the good news that the spam reporting buttons have now been rolled out to the live platform.
If you receive a message that’s marked as [-SPAM-] which isn’t, or a message that isn’t marked as [-SPAM-] but should be, then we would normally suggest that you forward it to our spam training addresses. This however can be cumbersome and some customers have been known to get confused about which details require forwarding.
Well help is at hand. If you use our Webmail platform then all this can now be achieved by a simple left mouse-click!
Bob
One of our customers, ‘Webwise’ on the portal forums, has also taken the time to create a plugin for Outlook Express that some of you might want to check out here.
Following the Webmail Incident in May, we withdrew our @mail Webmail solution and implemented SquirrelMail as a temporary solution. We recently began the process of reviewing alternative Webmail applications and in our investigation into many of them we were led back to thoughts of “Squirrelmail can do this, Squirrelmail does that better” etc…
So, we’ve been scratching our heads. We know that SquirrelMail doesn’t exactly look fantastic, but it certainly is a great performing, powerful Webmail client. It does what it says on the tin and it’s fairly easy to use too (albeit with its little kinks). The ability to change the theme and display preferences make it bearable with regards to looks also. In fact, many customers have commented on how refreshing SquirrelMail is to use.
With that in mind, we’d like to see what you guys think – in general. Now, we know we can’t please everyone without offering every Webmail client under the sun – and that certainly isn’t possible. What we would like to do is provide a Webmail service that meets the needs of our customers, performs well, is scaleable, functional and, above all, is secure.
What we want to know then, is – should we consider keeping SquirrelMail going forwards? What would you guys need to make SquirrelMail work for you? What functionality is lacking? What ‘extras’ would you like? How could we improve it? Do you like SquirrelMail? Do you really dislike SquirrelMail, if so – why? Should we dismiss it entirely? Do we need to make it look nicer? Is a nice ‘skin’ all it needs?
Now, this is not a decision to stick with SquirrelMail. Nor is it a “U-turn” on what we’ve previously said. As I’ve said above, we’re looking at all the options available to us, and having used SquirrelMail for a couple of months we’ve seen it as a real strong contender amongst Webmail clients… and one that could provide us with a permanent solution going forward. We just want to get you guys involved and see what you think.
Do let us know. You can contribute to the forum thread here!
Following-up on the webmail incident report, we pledged to provide answers to any remaining queries which the original report didn’t address. We have answered as many of those questions as we can here, although primarily for reasons of ongoing platform security there are a number of questions asked that we have not provided direct answers to.
Since May, we have been focused on a 90 day plan which we formulated following the webmail incident. This combines a number of sub-projects, some of which were already in progress before the event (Such as ensuring PCI compliance), and others that have come about as the result of the adoption of harder security standards across our operation. This has ranged from internal doors being locked down with biometric access, to the rebuilding of servers and other network elements with a view to application standardisation and code consolidation (which will have the added benefit of making future developments simpler and more robust). The project also includes publishing our data retention and privacy policies and ensuring these are implemented fully in all parts of our operation.
More…
Following on from the webmail incident PlusNet have added more functionality to the Manage My Mail tool.
These features are:-
- Customers can now set up a redirect to automatically blackhole an address using the redirect option
- Mailbox names can now be 1 character long, previously the minimum was 2 characters
- Increased search functionality on mailboxes and redirects, this will make it easier to find a specific mailbox
- Redirects can now be edited without losing the search/sort options currently in use
- When a mailbox is deleted customers are now warned that any associated aliases will be removed
- There is now a link back to the customer portal from webmail
- The attachment size allowed in webmail has been increased from 2MB to 7MB
These activities are additional features to go alongside the deliverables in the Webmail Incident Report
There are still more ideas and features in the pipeline and we will update you as we have more information.
Further information about the changes we are making for our customers, announced in the webmail incident report are now available. These deliverables were:
1) The ability to change your PlusNet username
2) Get a free .uk domain name
3) SSL encrypted connections for POP3 and IMAP email and FTP
4) Improvements to the ‘Manage my mailbox’ tool
5) The ability to blackhole username@username.plus.com
6) Publishing our spam detection rates on our website for comparison with other ISPs
7) Publishing our new Privacy Policy and Data Retention policies on our portal
Below follows an overview of the changes we are making and associated time-scales.
The Webmail Incident Report is re-produced below. This will be distributed to customers via our newsletter soon. More…
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