email questions (before commiting to leave Pipex)

I successfully avoided spam for years with Ppex by using an alias. When I was 'discovered' by spam I just changed my alias, told all my contacts (slightly onerous but not too bad) and off I went again, clean.

I've read the Plusnet guide on Mailboxes and Aliases repeatedly and still don't understand I'm afraid. I'd appreciate some help, but this is how it seems to me:
Basic email address: [email protected] where aaa (forename) and uuu (username) are chosen at set up. I wouldn't tell anybody about aaa
Then I can choose an alias, say bbb, which gives an email address [email protected] This would be my day to day email address. Mail sent to [email protected] be picked up in Thunderbird just like mail sent to [email protected]
Then if bbb is found by the spamming community I can just make a new alias [email protected], delete the alias bbb and I'm clear again. Any mail sent to [email protected] would be 'blackholed', as the guide put it

I may seem dumb, but the guide talks freely about mailboxes, mailbox names, usernames and so on and confusingly uses examples like 'your mailbox name is made up of your username and the name of the mailbox you are logging into'

Perhaps someone could tell me if I correctly understand aliases, and what my mailbox name(s) would be - thanks.

I'll let someone else explain mailboxes but have had no spam problems since I joined in July. I did have beta test Pipex spam filter ( not on general release) and that collected 100 per day.

A mailbox is an email address that has it's own username and password.
An alias is an email address that is delivered to a mailbox therefore more than one address can be collected using the same password.

In reply to:

---

Basic email address: [email protected] where aaa (forename) and uuu (username) are chosen at set up. I wouldn't tell anybody about aaa
Then I can choose an alias, say bbb, which gives an email address [email protected] This would be my day to day email address. Mail sent to [email protected] be picked up in Thunderbird just like mail sent to [email protected]

---

Looks correct so far.

In reply to:

---

Then if bbb is found by the spamming community I can just make a new alias [email protected], delete the alias bbb and I'm clear again. Any mail sent to [email protected] would be 'blackholed', as the guide put it

---

Yep, you can remove the bbb alias and replace it with ccc.



If you want multiple addresses that all need to be logged into separately (different members of family might be one reason), then using mailboxes is the way to go.
Any mailboxes set up would then be logged into like this, username+mailboxname along with the specific password for that mailbox.

Hope that's cleared it up a bit.

Almost, thank you. So as i use Thunderbird I could set up two Thunderbird email accounts, one getting email from [email protected] and one getting email from [email protected]

Now all I have to do is understand mailbox naming - sorry!

It seems that an additional mailbox identified as ppp would generate email address of the form fff@ppp+uuu.plus.com and an alias to that could be ggg@ppp+uuu.plus.com

I still don't totally understand what a mailbox name is and hence a mailbox username. Am I correct is assuming that in my examples aaa, bbb, ccc, fff and ggg are usernames and .the respective mailbox names are aaa+uuu, bbb+uuu, ccc+uuu, fff+ppp+uuu and ggg+ppp+uuu?

It really seems a pity that the Plusnet guide can't have some simple examples for what seems to be a very flexible but rather complex system..

The email address would always end in @username.plus.com, irrespective of any mailboxes.

I'd suggest having a look at this page, which describes the differences between mailboxes and aliases.

I'm afraid that was the page that confused me. I printed it out and just couldn't get to grips with it. Perhaps all will become clear when I've migrated.

Try this video Plusnet made, may make things easier to explain
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K-N6Y1nq5vI

Edited by deleted (Thu 31-Jan-08 19:17:25)

You are confusing the email address with the login you use when collecting mail or going on to webmail.

Your email addresses are all of the form [email protected]

You have one default mailbox which you access with a login name of username - you can configure which additional email addresses (all of the form [email protected]) are accepted in to the default mailbox in addition the the one you select when signing up.

You can then create any number of additional mailboxes. For a mailbox called zzz (email address [email protected]) you use the login name username+zzz to access it. You can also create aliases of this mailbox so that [email protected] is collected in that mailbox rather than your default mailbox.

HTH

Edited by jelv (Thu 31-Jan-08 20:28:32)

Hi there,

The username+mailbox name is just for logging in, you wouldn't actually have it in this format in the address.

Maybe this will clear it up for you:

I have two mailboxes, [email protected], and [email protected]. I use mail@ for my friends and family, and mand@ for website notifications and such like.

To log into mail@ I use just my username and default password, as this is my default mailbox. To log into mand@ I use username+mand and my mailbox password.

Because I like to monitor who gives away my addy I often use a disposable address if I am suspicious, therefore I have lots of aliases, [email protected], [email protected] etc.

All of these disposable addresses are set up as aliases pointed at my mand mailbox. I can then delete these very easily if necessary, without having to delete the mailbox itself.

I hope this helps.

First, when you sign up, you only specify your username (uuu in your examples). This creates what is called your default or catchall mailbox which you collect mail from by logging into mail.plus.net with your username and portal password. On the mail control panel this is stated as your default mailbox. This mailbox by default receives email for any email address you have not set-up a mailbox or alias for. You can also disable the catchall facility so mail for a mailbox or alias you have not set up is discarded (blackholed).

You can create as many separate mailboxes as you like ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected]), each with its own login and password. The + is only used when you login to your mailboxes, they are not part of the email address, and allow you to specify what mailbox you are trying to download mail for e.g.

To access email for mailbox aaa, you login with uuu+aaa (uuu then a plus sign then aaa) and the password you set for aaa
To access email for mailbox bbb, you login with uuu+bbb and the password you set for bbb
To access email for mailbox xyzzyx, you login with uuu+xyzzyx and the password you set for xyzzyx

You can create any alias you like and specify the actual mailbox you want the emails to go into. So you could set-up an alias [email protected] to go into the mailbox [email protected], [email protected] to go into mailbox xyzzyx.uuu.plus.com.

There are a few other features but that is probably enough to take in for now.