Where multiple options are shown for the same setting, our server supports any of them, and you may choose according to your own preference or the capabilities of your software.

   SETTINGS THAT APPLY TO BOTH SEND AND RECEIVE:

   Login, or User Name                         (your full email address)
   Password                                    (same as before the upgrade)

      Your "full email address" looks like this:   somebody@example.sca.org
      where "somebody" is the name you chose when you signed up, and
      "example.sca.org" is replaced by the domain you selected from our
      list of options (archer.sca.org, lady.sca.org, fighter.sca.org, etc.).

   SETTINGS FOR RECEIVE:

   For receiving email, you have your choice of either POP3 or IMAP4
   communication protocols; our server supports either. Your email software
   may refer to POP3 as POP and IMAP4 as IMAP; in this context, the terms
   are interchangeable.

   Server Name, or Host Name                   mail.sca.org
   Port number for POP3                        110
   Port number for encrypted POP3              995
   Port number for IMAP4                       143
   Port number for encrypted IMAP4             993
   Encryption method   (*)                     TLS or none
   Authentication method                       PLAIN (also called clear
                                               or cleartext) or CRAM-MD5
                                               (we suggest CRAM-MD5)

   SETTINGS FOR SEND:

   The protocol we support for sending mail is SMTP.

   Server Name, or Host Name                   mail.sca.org
   Port number for SMTP                        25 or 10025 (**)
   Port number for SSMTP                       465 (***)
   Encryption method   (*)                     TLS or none
   Authentication method                       PLAIN (also called clear
                                               or cleartext) or CRAM-MD5
                                               (we suggest CRAM-MD5)
   
   NOTES:

   (*)  A later section of this document provides more details about
        encryption.

   (**) Port 25 is the normal one, but some Internet providers (notably those
        in many hotels and wireless "hotspots") may block you from using
        this setting to reach our server, and may force port 25 to their
        server. We provide port 10025 as an alternate that you may use in
        such situations. From our end, the two are treated equivalently,
        and they connect to the same software on the same machine. If you
        use a laptop and travel a lot, you are probably better off to pick
        port 10025 for the SCA (but not necessarily for your other email
        providers).

   (***) This is an obsolete protocol that very few people will be using.
        This port number differs from the others in that it assumes an
        SSL session immediately upon connecting, rather than allowing the
        client computer to ask for SSL if it is wanted. If you don't know
        what this means, you probably don't need this port.

   PING mail.sca.org (64.39.30.44) 56(84) bytes of data.
   64 bytes from mail.sca.org (64.39.30.44): icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.093 ms
   64 bytes from mail.sca.org (64.39.30.44): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.091 ms
   64 bytes from mail.sca.org (64.39.30.44): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.098 ms
   64 bytes from mail.sca.org (64.39.30.44): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.091 ms

The number 64.39.30.44 is the Internet Protocol (IP) address of our new server. If your system shows 66.216.68.103 instead, then you are trying to connect to the old server.

The Internet's "domain name service" (DNS) converts the friendly name "mail.sca.org" to the IP address 64.39.30.44. DNS servers are scattered all over the Internet, and your SCA's DNS is the authoritative source for anything in the sca.org domain or its subdomains (knight.sca.org and so on).

When changes are made to the DNS data, as we have just done, it takes a little time for the new information to propagate to all corners of the Internet. Depending on your ISP, this could happen almost immediately or it could take a few hours or even a day or two. Before we changed the servers, we "tagged" our DNS data to warn other Internet servers that it would be changing soon, and that they should check every two hours for updates. However, we can't control whether or not individual ISPs respect that request.

Most of the time, the answer to this problem is simply to wait. There is nothing that we or you can do to speed up the process, other than what we have already done as described above.

If you run certain older versions of Windows (we unfortunately do not have a specific version list), there may be a need to reboot your computer to ensure that it sees the new information. If you are in doubt, and you run one of the "consumer" Windows versions (Windows 95, 98, or Me), try shutting down and rebooting.

X-Spam-Score: 3.0 (+++)
X-Spam-Score-Int: 30
X-Spam-Report: SpamAssassin report. See the header X-Spam-Settings-User
        to find out the account from report which user-specific preferences
        (if applicable) were obtained.
        Content analysis details:   (3.0 points, 4.0 required)
        pts rule name              description
        ---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
        0.1 HTML_90_100            BODY: Message is 90% to 100% HTML
        -2.6 BAYES_00               BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 0 to 1%
        [score: 0.0000]
        0.0 HTML_MESSAGE           BODY: HTML included in message
        3.2 NO_DNS_FOR_FROM        DNS: Envelope sender has no MX or A DNS records
        2.0 RCVD_IN_SORBS_DUL      RBL: SORBS: sent directly from dynamic IP address
        [68.206.188.130 listed in dnsbl.sorbs.net]
        0.2 DNS_FROM_AHBL_RHSBL    RBL: From: sender listed in dnsbl.ahbl.org
X-Spam-Level: +++
X-Spam-Settings-User: youraccount@yourdomain.sca.org
X-Spam-Flag: YES

The header you should check is the X-Spam-Score-Int header. That represents an integer value from negative infinity to positive infinity indicating the "spaminess" of the message. Negative values indicate mail from an impeccable source such as messages sent from our own webmail, where we can vouch for the authenticity of the person sending the message because we checked their password at login. X-Spam-Score-Int is equal to ten times X-Spam-Score; the latter has one decimal digit (e.g., X-Spam-Score: 3.0 (+++)), so we provide the integer version also in case your software doesn't know how to compare decimal fractions.

Not all of the headers are present on every message. For suspected spam messages, the long X-Spam-Report is added to tell you why SpamAssassin thought the message might be spam. For messages that are clearly not spam, this report is omitted to save space.

The header X-Spam-Settings-User is most often set to your own email address. This indicates whose preferences were used in determining the spam filtering options. For a few messages, it is not possible to use your personalized settings and the system will have to revert to its system-wide settings. This header will tell you when that has happened, so check it if you think your personal settings aren't working right.

For messages above a certain threshold, the likelihood that they are spam becomes vanishingly small, and it is a significant resource drain on the server to scan them. In those few messages, you will see this header instead of the spam scores:

X-Spam-Skipped: Message not spam scanned (too large)

Again, remember that these are headers that are not shown in most email software unless you ask to see them.