Please click here for more information.

IMAP allows you to create folders on the mail server. Spam folders are also kept on the server.  If your IMAP folders are not showing up, follow these steps to subscribe to them with your Mozilla Thunderbird mail client:

1. Select the mail account from the left column
2. Right-click on your mail account name and select Subscribe
3. You will see all the available IMAP folders on the server. Select the ones that you want to add to your mail client and click on Subscribe
4. Press OK and you will notice that the new folders are now available

Please see this pdf file.

Overview

The UBC Faculty & Staff Email (FASmail) service is an enterprise email service for eligible staff, faculty and student employees of the University of British Columbia.

Documentation and References

    UBC Faculty & Staff Email (FASmail)

Getting Started

*Send a request directly to UBC IT by fill in...
The "FASmail Service Request Web Form" (*Ignore "For Departmental Administrators only")
and ask for FASmail mail box with FASmail alias, "firstname.lastname(at)ubc.ca".

WebForm:
https://web.it.ubc.ca/forms/fasmail/

    *Note: Make sure to supply these options...
    ...
    [Requestor Type]
    Service* [ FASmail User Mailbox ]
    Request Type* (x) Add

    [Technical Details]
    - User's Email Alias*
    (x) firstname.lastname(at)ubc.ca email alias
    ...

If you want to forward FASmail to your StatNet email, ask UBC IT do it for you as it's much simpler.

After you have your FASmail setup with an alias firstname.lastname@ubc.ca, notify Assistant to Head (headsec at stat.ubc.ca), so she can add your new alias to UBC Directory.
You can check it here see if it's ready entered or not.
https://directory.ubc.ca/index.cfm

Reasons

There are many reasons that would prevent an Email from getting to its destination (whether that be your mailbox or someone else's). Here are some common reasons:

1. Wrong Email address: either the username portion or the domain portion may be wrong. A common mistake is to include specific hostname to an Email address, such as "user@host.mail.domain" when the correct Email address is "user@mail.domain". You ought to get a notice of this ("bounce message").
2. Mail too large: most places have restrictions on the size of a single piece of Email they will accept. Exceeding that limit will result in the mail being rejected. You ought to get a notification when this happens.
3. Mailbox is full: our site enforce storage quotas. If your mailbox size exceeds your allotted limit, no Email can be delivered until you make more space available (i.e. delete some Email). See elsewhere in our FAQ to see how to check quotas.

4. Mail server is busy or not operational: a mail server (either sending or receiving) may not always be available to immediately deliver mail. In these cases, mail will be queued and delivery retried at periodic intervals until the receiving mail server is available. If the mail server does not respond in a reasonable amount of time, the mail will be deemed non-deliverable, and a bounce message will be sent back to the sender.

   The retry interval and the total retry time policy is set by the sending Email server: at our site, mail will be retried every 4 hours for a maximum of 24 hours.

5. Blacklisting or spam/virus filtering: some sites use blacklisting, or spam or virus filtering to try to detect unwanted mail and reject them. Depending on the mail policy at the offending site, the sender may or may not be given notice that mail has been filtered.

   At our site, we do employ blacklists and do virus filtering. The sender always gets a notice stating the reasons why their Email was rejected, but some Email users are not technically savvy enough to understand what's going on. If you suspect that Email being sent to you is being blocked, contact the IT staff (see below about reporting mail problems) and they may be able to suggests workarounds or remedial actions.

   UBC Mail Sentry quarantines suspicious mail destined for your FASmail account. To check which (if any) emails were quarantined, log in to the Mail Sentry Service.

6. Mail being forwarded incorrectly or mail loops being formed.
7. The user has set lax permissions on their home directory. Our mail server, for example, will refuse to deliver mail to a user with a home directory that is world writable.

Most of these problems are apparent when an error message occurs (either from your mail reader or from a Email rejection notice).

How to report problems

When reporting mail problems, it is important to give as much detailed and accurate information as possible. Sometimes the only way to diagnose these problems (especially when the problem is days or weeks old) is by looking through the mail logs, and precise time/sender/recipient details are required to track the problem down. Email headers (envelope information) from Email (if available) is usually useful, and should also be included when reporting problems.

Sending large attachments via Email is an inefficient and wasteful way of disseminating information to a large group of people, as one copy is made for each recipient. It taxes the network, mail servers, disk storage of both the sender and especially the recipients, and sometimes the recipient's patience if they use a dial-up modem for their internet connection.

The typical scenario is that someone will broadcast information (and sometimes committing the double sin of formatting it in a proprietary format) to a mailing list that may contain hundreds, or even thousands, of recipients. A copy is then made for each individual recipient. So, for example, if 4 megabyte attachment is sent to a department mailing list with 250 people, an aggregate of 1 gigabyte of mail storage is used by this one message.

Some Email accounts (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo) have size quotas, and sending large attachments to them will either fill up or severely reduce the available space for new mail.

It is also typical that not all of the recipients need or want the attachment, yet these recipients have already expended the considerable computing overhead to receive, scan or filter for spam and viruses, and store the large attachment.

A far better strategy is to post the information or file onto a web site (or FTP site if you have access to one), or https://cloud.stat.ubc.ca, then Email out a short message that describes the contents and refers interested parties to the URL. This will allow people who want the data to pull the data off the web site at their leisure, and those who don't can delete the message without having incurred the overhead of receiving all the data in the first place.

Using this method with the above scenario, a 1K blurb instead of a 4Mb attachment will mean a three-orders of magnitude (1/4000th) reduction in computing resources.

Original author: Joseph Tam

The Mantra

Be skeptical of any request for private information.

As a general rule, don't give out private information unless you are sure to where, and to whom, you are giving them to. This means any private information (passwords, bank PIN, SIN, etc.) over any communication medium: Email, unfamiliar web site form, telephone, etc.

Practical Rules

The mantra is a great rule of thumb, but lacks the clarity of concrete rules. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it will go a long way toward keeping your account safe:

• Do not give out passwords, nor any private information, by Email.

• Do not give your StatNet password to any web site that does not end with .stat.ubc.ca. Do not give your UBC CWL password to any web site that does not end with .ubc.ca. (Check what your browser reports the URL as.)

• Do not give private information over the phone unless you know who the other person is, or by using contact information you've obtained by independent, trustworthy means (not Google Maps).

What is phish?

Phish is a term for fraudulent Email instructing you to divulge confidential information, such as passwords, PINs, credit card numbers, or personal identity data (e.g. date of birth) in order to impersonate you to steal resources that belong to you. Phish Emails are written by criminals -- don't be a victim. Don't underestimate how damaging losing control over your Email or identity is.

Examples of phish

You can see samples of phish reported by members of the Math department in their

PhishTank

A common example is an Email notifying you there is a problem with your Email account (e.g. out of storage, needs maintenance, upgrade, etc.), and asking for your Email address and password to fix it. The message may ask for this information by reply Email, or by entering into a web form outside our domain (stat.ubc.ca). These fraudsters are trying to gain control of your StatNet account, to send more spam or for other nefarious purposes.

Another common type are 419 scams, where the sender pose as a bank/government official or other person requiring your assistance to carry out a financial transaction. In return, they will pay you a fee or commission. They may even offer payment in the form of a cheque deposit, but written for an amount which will require some form of reimbursement. In reality, it's all an elaborate ruse to take your money.

There are many other examples, but the one thing they have in common is that they want you to give them information that they can use to take something from you. Don't do it -- [repeat the mantra].

Common characteristics of phish

Phish usually have some or all of these superficial traits, but you should not use these traits as the sole determination of whether a message is genuine. Fraudulent Email is evident by what it tries to make you do, not by what it looks like -- [repeat the mantra].

• Generic salutations (e.g. "Dear Sir", "Webmail user") that displays no intimate knowledge of who you are.

• Lack of credible contact information (no local phone numbers or real names) to verify assertions in the message.

• Spelling and grammar mistakes.

• Weird formatting and word usage (e.g. gratuitous upper casing, inconsistent spacing, etc.).

• Unfamiliar sender/recipient Email address, different From/Reply Email addreses, or web URLs or outside our domain (stat.ubc.ca).

• A tone of urgency (e.g. "Do it now!", "You may lose Email privileges!").

What should you do when you receive a Phish Email?

Receiving phish messages is harmless, but you should not respond to it, and never act upon any instructions within e.g. visit web page.

Neither StatNet nor University IT staff will ever ask you for your password, nor any confidential information via Email. If in doubt, please contact the IT staff using trusted channels (known Email address, phone number, in person).

If you have received fraudulent Email (or have doubt to its veracity), please forward the entire Email (full headers and body) to the IT staff. 

What should you do if you have been victimized?

If you have responded to Email or any communication method that was, in hindsight, suspicious or fraudulent, please go through this list of remedial actions. Speed is important -- fraudsters only need a few minutes to take advantage of information you've provided.

• If you have divulged your StatNet password, change your password as soon as you can. Contact the StatNet IT staff immediately. If you use the same password elsewhere, it would be prudent to change those as well.

• If you have given away financial information that can be used to commit identity fraud, contact your financial institutions such as bank or credit card company, to make them aware of the situation.

• [Optional] This is not time critical, but you can report fraud to Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. It won't help you immediately, but it may help someone else, and maybe even eventually help catch these creeps.

• Lastly, [repeat the mantra] until you are out of breath.

More information

• Wikipedia entry (Phishing)

• Tutorial Video

• Comedy Phish Skit: this is a humorous take on phish and spam in general, but it highlights the observation that if the content of spam was conveyed in the same analogous method as in person, you would have no trouble discerning it as fraudulent.

I. Webmail:
    https://webmail.stat.ubc.ca

II. Pine/Alpine or Elm/Mutt via SSH login

•    If you have a SSH (secure shell) capable host, you can login to any of our blic unix hosts (e.g. login.stat.ubc.ca) and use the command line mail reader (e.g. pine).

III. If you have a PC with network access, you can use an Email reader such

• Thunderbird
• Mailspring
• Apple Mail
• Outlook
• eM Client

To connect to our remote mail service and retrieve your email, you must configure your email client to use one of 2 remote Email protocols:

1. The IMAP protocol is the preferred choice. IMAP will do operation on a remote mailbox, rather than trying to download your INBOX and doing local operations as POP/POP3 would. Our IMAP installation is also set up to access your personal mailboxes (not just your INBOX as POP3 does), thus allowing you to access the same mail as you would with webmail or pine.

Here are the parameters you need to know:

• Protocol: IMAP
• Incoming mail server: email.stat.ubc.ca
• Port:
  • If using STARTTLS: 143 
  • If using SSL: 993
• Mail Folder Prefix: (leave empty)

2. The POP/POP3 protocol is less desirable.   POP/POP3 will try to download your INBOX down to your local disk.  Be careful to set "Leave mail on server" or "Do not download INBOX"

• Protocol: POP/POP3
• Incoming mail server: email.stat.ubc.ca
• Port: 
  •  If using STARTTLS: 110
  •  If using SSL: 995

To connect to send email from our email server, you must configure SMTP for your email client :

• Protocol: SMTP
• Incoming mail server: email.stat.ubc.ca
• Port:
  • If using STARTTLS: 587
  • If using SSL: 465

If you use a search engine to search for terms like the mail client you are using (e.g. "Thunderbird"), the protocol (e.g. "IMAP" or "SMTP"), and a keyword like "setup" or "configuration" you should be able to find step by step instructions on where to input the above information. (Make sure you substitute their values for ours!)

In PINE, you can specify the outgoing message header options: To, Cc, Bcc, Fcc and Lcc.

TO

Send this message to the following e-mail address (REQUIRED).

CC (CARBON COPY)

Send a carbon copy to the given e-mail address.

BCC (BLIND CARBON COPY)

Send a blind carbon copy to the given e-mail address. There will be nothing in the message header the that indicates a Bcc: was sent. The To: and Cc: recipients will not know a copy was sent to the Bcc: recipients.

FCC (FILE CARBON COPY)

Save a copy of this outgoing message into a file. The default file is "sent-mail". You may type Ctrl+T to get a list of all your folders and select one to use as the FCC for this message.

LCC (LIST CARBON COPY)

Send a copy of the message to a list of people but avoid having all of their addresses visible, in order to reduce clutter when the message is received.

To create a list of e-mail address, select the ``ADDRESS'' submenu in the main menu of PINE. Then type ``@'' to add new e-mail list.

When you compose your e-mail message, leave the header option To: blank. And type the nickname of the e-mail list in the header option Lcc:. Each recipient in the e-mail list will receive the message without their address being visible.

You need to use Ctrl+R to turn on/off the Bcc, Fcc, and Lcc header options.