Mail2World Blog

More Email Setup Tutorials

Hello, again!

Here at Mail2World, we're all about our customers. That means we always strive to meet our clients' changing needs, whether it's a building a new feature users want, integrating a new mobile device on the market or making it easier to use email. This time, we've added two new video tutorials that take users through step-by-step instructions for setting up Mail2World email on Outlook 2007 and Windows.

       

Preview: Outlook 2007 tutorial screen

 

Preview: Windows Mail tutorial screen

For users who prefer printed instructions, we also provide matching instructions in PDF format for both those email programs.

The video tutorials take you through an interactive setup process using a dummy account, so you can simply fill out the information on your own setup screen while following along with the video. The videos also require some user interaction; for example, you will need to tell the video instructor how you want your email account setup. You will have four options to choose from:

Each option you choose will take you down a separate setup path specific to the kind of access you want.

To find these tutorials, all you have to do to is:

1. Click on the Options link in the upper right corner of your email interface.
2. Under Mail Management, click on POP3/IMAP4 & SMTP Setup Information.
3. Select the video tutorial or PDF for the desktop email program you use.

These new tutorials are just another example of how Mail2World always has our users' best interests at top of mind. Hope you find them useful. For further assistance please contact support@mail2world.net.

CD Archiving From Mail2World

Let’s talk archiving. The need to protect your data and have ready access to it is becoming increasingly important in today’s business world. Business requirements, legal obligations, and email continuity all contribute to the need for data archiving.

 

Some of our customers have asked to have their email data saved on a CD or DVD as part of their disaster recovery system. It’s important to have several methods of ensuring email continuity in order to keep your business communication structure running smoothly. Plus, with all your company’s latest email on a disk right at your fingertips, it’s quick and easy to respond to executive's requests, legal discovery, etc.

Here are some facts about Mail2World’s Disk Archiving Service:

• Disk archival is available in CD or DVD formats.
• The disks come in text file format for easy search capability.
• All company mailboxes are conveniently stored on one CD or DVD.
• Disks will be shipped monthly, bimonthly or quarterly, depending on your archiving needs.
• Low monthly charge

For more information about Mail2World’s Disk Archiving Service, please call Chris Tobin at 310-209-0060 x101 or send him an email at ctobin@mail2world.net.

Cheers,

A.B.

Cisco Case Study Released

I'm proud to announce that our case study has finally been released on the Cisco Website.

You can find it here under their case study section:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps2706/prod_case_studies_list.html

And you can find it under the ACE (Application Control Engine) product line:

http://www..cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6906/index.html

I hope you all enjoy reading about our deployment and the results we have achieved in our partnership with Cisco! This is a great achievement for Mail2World, as we pride ourselves on being an industry leader with our technology solutions. For those of you thinking about using the Cisco ACE, a partial Cisco solution or a complete Cisco solution, please feel free to contact me with your questions!

A big thank you to Janne Wise over at Cisco, who helped us throughout the entire process of the case study, podcast and C-scape! As always it’s a pleasure working with you!

Best,

Julian

Fighting Fraud: Part 1 of 2

Avoiding Fraudulent Activity

As mail administrators, it's imperative to disseminate information that will keep your email users safe from any fraudulent activity.  In the business world, we often give out our domains and email addresses for obvious reasons, but at the same time, this puts our information at risk for email fraud.

There are a few rules that can help you and your users avoid falling victim to fraudulent activities:

Protect your vital financial information. Do not transmit this information via email, especially to individuals you do not know. This includes bank account numbers, driver license numbers, social security numbers, PayPal/Ebay IDs or passwords, or any password for that matter. Once fraudsters learn the password for your account, they can use that to retrieve other account information.

Avoid email scams. Beware of emails from individuals offering large amounts of money in return for "handling fees" paid to you for transferring the money to your bank account. These "419 Nigerian" scams are definitely to be avoided; in fact, it's best to not even respond to individuals requesting this type of transaction.

Be careful with online sales transactions. If you are into selling goods and merchandise over the Internet, either through auction sites or  e-commerce sites, don't do business with individuals from foreign countries who offer almost real (but fake) cashier's checks. The checks will most likely turn out to be fake, and you will be held liable for the amount when cashed. Or, if someone requests wire-service payment via Western Union or MoneyGram, it should also raise a flag. The use of an online escrow service may also be fraudulent. Some sellers may ask for a partial payment upfront, with promises they will ship the products purchased. 

Watch out for impersonators. Another prevalent scam involves emails sent by individuals impersonating Human Resource departments at large companies. They often ask users to pay a "traveling fee" to interviews, which they promise to reimburse upon the candidate's arrival at the location where an interview is to be held. The best strategy is to call and deal with situations like this over the phone.

Here are some other tips to avoid fraud:

• Only purchase merchandise from reputable stores or dealers.
• Don't be satisfied with only a post office box and a phone number. Be sure to obtain a physical address as well.
• Call the seller to see if the number is correct and working.
• Sending an email to verify a seller's email address is also recommended.
• Be wary of "companies" that use free web email services, since a credit card is never required to open these types of accounts. Reputable businesses will have email accounts at their own domain for business use.
• Consider not purchasing from sellers who won't provide you with any of this specific information. 

Our next post will highlight the ways Mail2World is actively preventing fraud through our mail system and who to notify about fraud or scam attempts.

Mail2World on the Move: Office Relocation Announcement

Exciting news! We moved M2W HQ to a bigger and better space this week! Our business has expanded so dramatically that our offices at 1100 Glendon in Westwood were starting to burst at the seams. In fact, our  explosive growth was the same reason we recently moved our all-new network to SAVVIS data centers! This is the second time we've outgrown our office space, starting with our first location in Century City back in 2000. We moved to Westwood in early 2004, so it looks like we're on a four-year cycle of seam bursting.

After shopping 40+ available spaces on L.A.'s Westside, we finally chose a beautiful and very spacious corner suite at 10960 Wilshire Blvd. The building is only a few blocks from our previous location in Westwood, so we can still enjoy our favorite lunch spots, but now the staff has plenty of room to grow.

If you want to contact us directly, please note that our phone and fax numbers remain the same. Only our mailing address has changed:

Mail2World, Inc.
10960 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 990
Los Angeles, CA 90024

If you're ever in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by and say hello!

Cisco Podcast Interview

Have you noticed quicker response times in your Mail2World interface? When you login or click on Inbox or Compose, do the pages seem to load faster?

It's true--the moment our new all-Cisco network launched last August, your email response time decreased from one second to 600 milliseconds. You've gotta admit, that's fast! No one in the email and collaborations market has this kind of response times.

Wonder how we did it? Check out this podcast interview on the Cisco website. You can listen to Mark Weiner, Cisco's Director of Market Management for Data Center Solutions, and me talk about how we were able to achieve such success!

http://www.cisco.com/cdc_content_elements/podcast/DC_mail2world.mp3

Best,

Julian

2008 Upcoming Plans

Happy New Year All,

Another year is gone, and the new year is already gaining speed. 2007 was a very good year at Mail2World. We accomplished important milestones on the infrastructure side of things...

First, we migrated one of our data centers into a SAVVIS facility. This new facility has great power, A/C and connectivity. At this facility, we also teamed up with Time Warner Telecom to improve our bandwidth blend. Both companies have a very solid, pure Cisco infrastructure that expands throughout the world. That means Mail2World's pure Cisco infrastructure gets extended that much closer to you, our user.

Which brings me to our second accomplishment: implementing a new pure Cisco infrastructure. Our new infrastructure has increased our availability, security, scalability and performance.

Third, we've been working hard on migrating our server infrastructure to Microsoft Windows 2003. From this migration, we've improved server stability, performance and security, in addition to lowering costs!

While 2007 was a great year for Mail2World, and we accomplished a lot, it was really just the foundation work we had to put in for our 2008 plans. This year, we have more green initiatives, server infrastructure virtualization, adding another data center and a long list of smaller projects.

I wish you all a prosperous and exciting new year! Thanks for following our blog!

Best,

Julian

How to Fight Spam

We want you to enjoy your Mail2World address free of the nuisance of unwanted mail. That's why Mail2World uses multiple layers of advanced real-time spam filters to protect your account, but unfortunately, there is no way to stop 100 percent of spam. We suggest you do the following:

1. Watch where you use your Mail2World address. It's a good idea to never use your Mail2World business address in chat rooms or when registering for online services, or anywhere else your address might be captured or saved. Don't list your email address on any Web sites, bulletin boards, online journals or any place it can be visible. All of these situations make it very easy to harvest your email address from anywhere in the world.

2. Have a second address to use in situations that may compromise your main address. Instead of putting your business email address at risk of harvesting by spammers, sign up for a FREE Mail2World Webmail account on www.mail2world.com). Use this address in any of the situations described in #1 above, or at any other time you may feel your Mail2World business address could be compromised. You can log in and forward any valid Mail2World email to your "real" Mail2World business account, and forget about the rest.

3. Read privacy policies. If you are going to use your business email address when registering for online services, make sure you read the site's privacy policy to verify how they will use your personal information. If they do not have a privacy policy, inquire about one before signing up.

4. Don't reply to spam. Many spammers place Remove links, or suggest that you reply to the mail with a message "remove me" so that you will no longer receive their mailings. Often this is simply a means for them to validate that your email address is in use, so they can send you more spam, more often.

5. Use filters. Your Mail2World account comes with powerful filtering options. You can find this feature by clicking on the Options link in the top right corner of your email account window. Our filtering options allow you to remove spam from your Inbox without ever having to see it!

To learn more about spam and how to fight it, visit the FTC Web site: http://www.ftc.gov/spam/

Cisco C-Scape 2007: Part 4 of 4 - Advance Network Services

I hope you've been enjoying my mini-series on the Cisco C-Scape 2007 event. The Application Network Services breakout session is where we did our presentation and participated as a panelist for the open forum.

Our session was led by Mark Weiner, director of product marketing for Data Center Solutions, with a presentation by George Kurian, VP & GM of the Application Delivery Business Unit. We also had Scott Cain, Head of IT Optimization and Sustainability from BT Global Services (that's British Telecom) with us. We had a great time participating with everyone on the panel, and the analysts had great questions and were fun to interact with!

It was great to see how BT's customers are utilizing Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) to reduce costs, consolidate, and improve services. I think BT's customers who are utilizing WAAS are only just beginning to see the benefits of compression and improved services. Future generations of these devices are only going to get better and have more capabilities.

Mail2World has not deployed any WAAS devices yet, but it is designed into our topology, if a customer were to need this type of services. Just another benefit of being on the Cisco platform and having a Software as a Service provider with these kinds of abilities!

My presentation was about the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) and how we are utilizing it, the real-world benefits we have gained, and how we plan to implement some of the more advanced features of ACE. You can see a copy of the slide presentation here:

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le21/le34/cscape/2007/post/presentations/BRK1044.pdf

One of the questions we were asked was from Lucinda Borovick, Director of Datacenter Networks from IDC. She wanted to know about our best practices in terms of choosing network equipment and what other factors led to our purchase of the ACE. This is a question we are asked often. Mail2World is similar to other ISPs in that we have five nines of availability requirements (99.999%), and everything we implement must have high availability. In addition, as a best practice, we only implement technology that is highly scalable and ensures maximum security. The other factor that was not discussed in detail at the conference but was a deciding factor for us was the ACE's ability to  have new features and technology. With the ACE being a part of our core network infrastructure running Cisco IOS, we are able to use it as a load balancer; leverage it as a security device and add multiple layers of protection; and when Cisco releases new IOS features, we can instantly upgrade to them without replacing any hardware.

As Cisco improves its Data Center 3.0 technologies and Mail2World enhances its Web 2.0 services, we will see the true power derived from blending the two together to create the ultimate Software as a Service Collaboration platform.

Julian

Happy New Year 2008!

Wishing you New Year blossoming with beautiful moments of joy, happiness and fulfillment!

Team Mail2World