09/07/07

This Brainstorm Tech Tip is sent as a service to all Brainstorm Internet customers to offer easy answers to common questions and to provide information that may be beneficial to help improve our customers' Internet experience. The following is an example of a question that we are frequently asked along with the helpful answer.

Dear Brainstorm, While I was traveling with my laptop a couple weeks ago I was having trouble getting my email to work at many locations along my trip. Now that I'm home again it is working fine. What was going on? – Joe in Hermosa
 
Hi Joe: Email challenges while you are traveling out of the area are actually a common occurrance. In most cases it is the result of security measures taken by the owners of whatever network you happen to be connecting to, whether it is at a hotel, an airport or an Internet cafe. If you normally use an email program such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Apple Mail, you will most likely only be able to receive mail (but not send) through your regular email program when you are connected to another Internet provider or a wireless hotspot.

So why does this have to be this way? It's all because of junk email. During the last year junk mail, also called spam, has become such a problem that most Internet Service Providers have been forced to tighten the security on their email services so that only their own customers are able to send email through their system by way of using their username and password. Brainstorm has also tightened email security and requires your email program to provide your username and password each time you send email. This is called SMTP Authentication and we walk our customers through the simple setting to enable this when you first sign up, from then it's automatic and you may not even be aware that this security feature is working every time you are sending an email. This security greatly reduces the chances that an uninvited spammer can access our email servers and use them to send junk mail.

So How Can I Send Email When I'm Traveling? Not to worry, there is an easy way to travel and still enjoy your email. We recommend using our online WebMail whenever you are on the road, whether you are using your own laptop or borrowing someone else's computer. By using WebMail you will always be able to send email from your Brainstorm account without difficulty.  If your email address is @gobrainstorm.net, @frontier.net, @animas.net, @durangolive.net or any other Brainstorm owned domain offered to our customers you can get to WebMail through our webpage located at http://www.gobrainstorm.net/webmail.php , or if you don't want to remember that long address just go to our homepage at www.gobrainstorm.net and click on WebMail. If you have Brainstorm host your own privately owned domain name at an additional cost then you must access your WebMail at http://webmail.yourdomainname.com (replace yourdomainname.com with your actual domain name). When you get to the WebMail page you just log in with your email address and password. Once logged in you will see your new email messages, if there are any, right on the main screen. To send someone a new email message just click “New Message” in the top row of icons. We recommend that you put your own email address in the “cc” line so that you will receive a copy of what you send through WebMail.

As always, thank you for choosing Brainstorm Internet. It is our pleasure to serve you and we will continue striving for new ways to improve your Internet experience. If there is a specific tech support related topic that you would like us to address in our weekly tech tip we welcome and invite you to email us your suggestion.

Your Brainstorm Internet Team

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