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"SM" is the usual abbreviation for SquirrelMail. They mean the same thing. SquirrelMail is no longer available on AcceptIO.com.

SquirrelMail is an open source webmail package available on AcceptIO.com. We didn't create SM. Rather, it is developed and maintained by the folks at squirrelmail.org and is used by thousands of sites all over the world. However, for any local problems or questions about SquirrelMail, you should ask us at AcceptIO.com. The SM folks just deal with the software, and they don't know anything about our local settings and configuration.

Of course, if you want to know more about SM in general, including possibly using it somewhere else or looking into features that we don't enable on AcceptIO.com, then the SM web site is your best bet. You can also ask us about it locally, and we'll tell you what we know!

The AcceptIO.com website provides a link to our SM installation from the front page, and you can get there via the "Quick Links" drop-down menu on every page.  To go directly to our SM installation, use this address: https://www.acceptio.com/sm.

"HM" (or "HM2") is the usual abbreviation for Hastymail². They mean the same thing. The superscript is part of the name and is not a version number. Hastymail² is an open source webmail package that used to be available on AcceptIO.com. It is no longer available on AcceptIO.com.

"RC" is the usual abbreviation for Roundcube. They mean the same thing.

Roundcube is an open source webmail package available on AcceptIO.com. We didn't create RC. Rather, it is developed and maintained by the folks at roundcube.net and is used by many sites all over the world. However, for any local problems or questions about Roundcube, you should ask us at AcceptIO.com. The RC folks just deal with the software, and they don't know anything about our local settings and configuration.

Of course, if you want to know more about RC in general, including possibly using it somewhere else or looking into features that we don't enable on AcceptIO.com, then the RC web site is your best bet. You can also ask us about it locally, and we'll tell you what we know!

The AcceptIO.com website provides a link to our RC installation from the front page, and you can get there via the "Quick Links" drop-down menu on every page. To go directly to our RC installation, use this address: https://www.acceptio.com/rc.

What does this message mean? "Too many recipients for this conversation." You might see it in an error dialog in your email client or mixed in with the bounce explanation when a message comes back to you.

To protect our users and servers from certain types of attacks, we limit the number of recipients to about 100 for a given message in a single SMTP conversation. The limit is on the number of recipients as seen on the incoming message (technically, the SMTP RCPT envelope recipients). We don't count any additional recipients that are added as a result of internal processing. When we see more than about 100 recipients, we accept the first 100 and then give a "defer" response to the sender for the others. A "defer" response doesn't represent a failure from the point of view of the sender. Rather, it means "try again later". A typical SMTP server will try again, picking up with the first "deferred" recipient. So, for a legitimate message, any number of recipients may be used, but it may take more than one connection to get them delivered to our servers.

We also apply this restriction to messages sent by our own users. If you need to send a message to more than 100 recipients, there are a couple of ways you can get around the restriction. First, you could divide the recipients into groups of 100 and send the message to those groups as separate messages. Second, you could create a distribution list of many recipients using the autoforwarding features of the AcceptIO email service. (One thing that doesn't work is putting the recipients on a BCC: line instead of a TO: or CC: line. You might like to do that for other reasons if you have many recipients, but it won't fool our recipient counter.)

The short answer is: no, we can't.

Passwords are not stored directly on our service. Instead, we store what is known as a "hash" of your password. Hashes are one-way mathematical manipulations. When you enter your password, we compute its hash value and compare it to the hash value we have stored. We can tell if the correct password was entered, but even someone with complete access to the AcceptIO service infrastructure would not be able to get a copy of your password.

So, unfortunately, if you have forgotten your password, we can't tell you what it is. The best we can do is help you reset it to a new value. Please contact AcceptIO support if you need that sort of help.

The conventional wisdom says that if you try to unsubscribe from spam, you'll just get more spam because you confirm to the spammers that your email address is "live". Is the conventional wisdom right? Maybe, if you try to unsubscribe from every spam that comes your way. If you're more discriminating, it might actually be useful.

If you are getting unwanted messages that you have directly or indirectly asked for, you should try to follow the unsubscribe instructions that the sender provides. After all, just because you aren't interested doesn't mean that the sender is a spammer. If you don't want those messages, be fair to the sender. We don't want to penalize senders with ethical practices just because of our own confusion or laziness.

Now that greylisting is letting us see through the fog of spam, some patterns are emerging. We believe that the characteristics of the spammers are different these days than they were in the early days of spam.

Lots of spam attempts come in aimed at random email addresses. Some are lucky guesses (we often get hundreds of attempts at unlucky guesses from obviously the same source) and others are email addresses harvested from who knows where. Greylisting stops most of those because they come in mainly from compromised/infected systems and PCs around the world, and they usually don't call back to get past greylisting.

Another kind of spam comes from folks who are specifically targetting your email address. This may look like it's coming from many different places, but often those many places are "marketing affiliates" of some mailing list owner. There's no guarantee that if you click on the unsubscribe link or email the unsubscribe address that they will remove you from their list(s).

But ... we've now seen in several cases that they sometimes do just that. If you ask them, they take you off their list. Sometimes they even exceed your expectations, stopping almost immediately even though the unsubscribe sites suggest it may take a couple of weeks.

So, our advice is that if you notice a lot of spam that has a kind of familiar pattern to it, especially if greylisting is stopping most of the random spam you used to get, take a shot at unsubscribing. There's no guarantee that the conventional wisdom is wrong, but you probably don't have much to lose. If you need help unsubscribing from something, contact AcceptIO support.

Greylisting is one of the many automated tools we use on the AcceptIO servers to try to minimize how much spam you get while providing high-quality service for legitimate email. You can read more about our greylisting feature here: Greylisting.

Those are all standard protocols related to email. All are supported by the AcceptIO email service. POP3 and IMAP4 are used for receiving mail. SMTP is used for sending mail. Most modern email client applications will give you a choice between POP3 and IMAP4 for incoming mail. SMTP is generally the only choice for outgoing mail.

POP3, which stands for "Post Office Protocol, version 3", is a protocol for an email client application to fetch messages from an account's INBOX on a server. Although most email clients have an option to "leave messages on server" (or similar wording), POP3 is most often used in a mode where the messages are downloaded to your PC and deleted from the server. POP3 doesn't know anything about folders other than the INBOX. With most POP3 clients, the messages reside wherever you downloaded them. If you use another email client or another PC, it won't know anything about the messages you downloaded earlier.

IMAP4, which stands for "Internet Message Access Protocol, version 4", is newer and more flexible than POP3. It is possible to use IMAP4 in pretty much the same way as one would use POP3, but it has additional capabilties that POP3 cannot implement. IMAP4 knows about folders other than INBOX (including things like Sent, Draft, and Trash). Most IMAP4 email clients will let you make changes locally (moving or deleting messages, adding message flags, and so on) and then synchronize those changes to the server. Since the server can be thought of as holding the master copy of your messages, you can generally use multiple email clients or even multiple PCs and see the same things everywhere.

AcceptIO recommends configuring your email client to use IMAP4 for incoming mail. All web mail interfaces on AcceptIO.com are configured to use IMAP4. Some advanced features of the AcceptIO email service depend on you using IMAP4 and not POP3.

SMTP, which stands for "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", is one of the oldest email-related protocols still in use. It is used for submitting new messages you want to send and also for relaying messages from one email server to another (such as when you send messages to a non-AcceptIO address). In contrast to POP3 and IMAP4, authentication is optional with SMTP (so that servers that are strangers to each other can still exchange messages). You should always configure your email clients to use authentication for your outgoing connections to the AcceptIO email service.