WebMail Footers

Practically all free webmail systems have footers on outgoing e-mails. All e-mails sent through your Photon.Net WebMail account will have a footer on the bottom. This is merely a small bit of text which looks something like:

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WebMail provided by Photon.Net - http://www.photon.net/
Web hosting, multimedia broadcasting, e-commerce, and more.

This is our return for providing free WebMail service to you. You get a great free service, and we get additional exposure for our web site.

Usage Tips

• Messages in your Sent folder, or any folders other than Trash, all count towards your total disk space usage. If you find that you are running out of disk space, you need to delete some messages to free up space. Messages with file attachments are usually the main culprits for taking up disk space, particularly in your Sent folder. By deleting messages with large file attachments, you'll free up significant amounts of disk space for your e-mail messages.

• Your WebMail account should start with 3 folders in it: The INBOX, Sent, and Draft folders. A Trash folder will also be created the first time you delete a message. The Trash folder holds the contents of everything that is deleted from any of the other folders. If you want to clear storage space in your WebMail account, you will also have to delete the items from the Trash -- it is considered part of your disk space until you clear it. Messages are permanently cleared from the Trash by manually deleting them from the Trash using the checkboxes, or by using the quick "purge" link. The "purge" link next to the Trash will permanently empty everything from the Trash folder. Once you delete a message from the Trash, it is gone forever.

  Our WebMail system is based on the use of web page frames and templates which increase WebMail efficiency. Because all information is being loaded into templates, the following information is important to understand:

• Do not use the "Back" button in your web browser to return to a previous page. Only use active links within the WebMail system to navigate. If you use the "Back" button, the WebMail system may issue the last command over again, which in some cases can have unexpected or undesired results, such as deleting or moving a message, or showing an error message.

• Also do not open internal WebMail links in new unique browser windows. If you have multiple windows open within the WebMail system, you might get unexpected results. Use only one WebMail window. The exception is if you simply want to open a single message in a new window -- and then do nothing except close the window when you're done -- that won't cause any problems.

If you use your WebMail system responsibly, you should be able to avoid receiving or transmitting viruses. The #1 point to remember, is that viruses are generally spread through file attachments which are sent along with the e-mail. Our WebMail system does not download the file attachments to your computer unless you specifically click on the link to download the attachment. That is the perfect virus prevention system -- You have full control and full responsibility over your choice to download a file, and what you do with the file once you download it.

Same as every internet user, you are responsible for keeping your own computer free of viruses/worms. We recommend running virus protection software on your own computer, and scanning any files you download before you use them. If you receive a file attachment in your e-mailbox from someone you don't know, we recommend not downloading or running any unknown file attachments. When you do download files, make sure your web browser is set up to only download the files and not automatically run them -- that way your virus prevention software has a chance to scan it before you do anything with it.

It is the end-user's (your) responsibility to scan your incoming files for viruses -- this does not occur within the WebMail system. In some rare cases where a virus/worm displays unique behavior which we can track on the server, we have measures in place to prevent it. For example, the "sexyfun.net" virus always appears from "hahaha@sexyfun.net", so the solution is simply to block that address from our server. However, most newer viruses are much more tricky, they can appear in a variety of forms and are often sent from someone you know -- as such, there is no way to automatically recognize those e-mails as viruses. We would have to scan all of your e-mails which we consider to be your private information and we do not want to scan. (Such measures are also very taxing on the server.)

Spam Prevention

Spam prevention is provided by the popular SpamAssassin software. We also use blackhole lists to block messages from open relay servers which are commonly abused for spam.