ChoiceMail One Reviewers Guide

September 2003

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Table of Contents

Press and Business Contacts at DigiPortal ................................................. 3 Welcome To ChoiceMail One from DigiPortal Software, Inc. .............. 3

Methods, Advantages & Limitations.......................................................... 4 How Permission Based systems work ...................................................... 5 Support for the Visually-Impaired Community .................................... 5 Spoofing responses? Sorry, it can’t be done! ....................................... 6 More on Mailing Lists ...................................................................................... 6 How People use ChoiceMail One differently........................................... 7 For Those Who Don’t Like the Pop-Up Screen...................................... 7

ChoiceMail One Overview.................................................................................. 8 How ChoiceMail One Works with Your Email Application ................. 8 How ChoiceMail One Prevents Spam from Reaching Your Inbox .. 9 The Sender Registration Process ............................................................... 9

System Requirements ........................................................................................ 9 ChoiceMail One Key Features ........................................................................ 10 Getting Started ................................................................................................... 10

1 – Software Installation............................................................................. 11 2 - Using the Configuration Wizard to Configure your POP3 Accounts ............................................................................................................ 11 3 - Manually Configuring Your POP3 Accounts ................................... 13 4 - Webmail Accounts................................................................................... 14 5 - Importing Existing Email Addresses ................................................ 14 Accessing AOL Email through Standard Email Clients..................... 15

Running ChoiceMail One for the First Time.............................................. 15 The ChoiceMail One Main Window ............................................................... 16

Accepting and Rejecting Senders ............................................................ 17 How ChoiceMail One Works............................................................................ 18 Permission Management ................................................................................. 20

Approving Domains ....................................................................................... 20 Specifying Email Rules ................................................................................. 21 When You Purchase Something Online ................................................. 22 Online Billing .................................................................................................... 23

Other Useful Information ................................................................................ 23 Multiple SMTP Servers.................................................................................. 23 Server Port Numbers .................................................................................... 24

Uninstalling ChoiceMail One ........................................................................... 24 .................................................................... 24 Additional Technical Assistance

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Press and Business Contacts at DigiPortal Press Renee L. Blodgett President Blodgett Communications Tel: 617-484-0063 Fax: 760-875-7426 Email: renee@blodgettcomm.com

Industry Joe Radomsky Vice President of Business Development Tel: 407-805-9582 Fax: 877-881-9127 Email: jradomsky@digiportal.com

Technical Nebojsa Djogo Vice President, Software Development Tel: 613-741-3574 Fax: 613-741-3574 Email: djogon@digiportal.com

DigiPortal Software, Inc. PMB 325 5224 West State Road 46 Sanford, FL 32771 Tel: 407-312-8989 www.digiportal.com

Welcome To ChoiceMail One from DigiPortal Software, Inc. Thank you for your interest in DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail One software, a leading anti-spam solution for both consumer and corporate markets.

DigiPortal Software, Inc. develops information-management tools designed to provide today’s end users with powerful tools for combating information overload and inappropriate Internet content. The company’s flagship solution, ChoiceMail One, is an innovative spam-blocking product that has received significant critical acclaim from the media for its ability to reduce incoming junk email to zero.

ChoiceMail One stands out as a leader among email software products that filter spam. Many email filters rely on users to continually establish and maintain rules; the ChoiceMail One anti-spam system is Permission-Based, with the flexibility to use several optional features for unknown email and rules for special situations.

Unlike most other anti-spam solutions on the market today, ChoiceMail One gives users the choice of how to set up their system. This flexibility gives the user control of their desktop. ChoiceMail One is positioned between the email application and the and the Internet serving as a border filter device; spam, web bugs and viruses (associated with the unwanted mail) are stopped before getting into the email inbox offering further security and protection.

Unwanted email has gotten out of control; it wastes time and costs real money. An IT manager at one business with 45 email addresses estimates that he spends 20 to 25% of his time dealing with the 30,000 spam his company receives each month. He explained that if the problem continued to grow at the same rate, half of his business day would be spent trying to resolve the issue.

Nucleus Research, estimates that the economic cost is $874 a year for every office worker with an e-mail account. Considering that there are approximately 100 million office based workers in the U.S., the tab comes to about $87 billion.

Recently, there have been a number of controversial discussions over the value of anti-spam software systems and whether they indeed help or increase the problem of unwanted email. It has even been reported that a handful of anti-spam companies have in fact sent spam out to mailing lists (DigiPortal is not one of those companies).

There has also been a significant amount of confusion in the press, weblogs and chat rooms over the pros and cons of the different methods used by anti-spam software solutions. There are three methods used by anti-spam software in the market today: Rules-Based systems, Permission-

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Based solutions and companies that offer a service, which require the user to set up new email account.

Methods, Advantages & Limitations

Method Advantages Limitations

Rule-based filters Effectively screens known spammers and spamming techniques

Requires regular updates to deal with new spamming tricks

May prevent desired email from getting through or may allow spam email messages through

Permission Based

Provides the user with the most control over their email inbox and allows them to determine their personal definition of spam

Some implementations do not deal well with mailing lists and newsletters, preventing wanted messages from getting through

Email services

Keeps spam away from the user’s inbox

Centralizes control of defining spam

Requires a new email address to which users must forward all messages

Given the growth of spam in recent years, and the increasing issues spam has created for consumers and corporations, there has been an explosion of anti-spam solutions on the market attempting to compete for market share. The anti-spam software market has become extremely crowded with numerous vendors touting that their solution is the “most accurate” spam killer on the market.

Most of the offerings in this market offer rules-based filters to controlling spam. Spam continues to be an unresolved problem since many of these rules-based solutions simply are not good enough to get around the endless stream of new tricks spammers use to get their junk through the filters. There has been much discussion about new sophisticated filtering methods such as border filtering and Bayesian analysis that promise to be the answer to the tricks of spammers. Border filtering simply refers to where the anti spam solution is placed to do its work; in this case at the “border” or before the email application. Bayesian analysis is definitely an improvement over standard filters adding the step of statistically guessing if a suspect message is spam. However, Bayesian analysis is simply guessing what is spam and what is desired email.

Permission-Based systems are an incredibly reliable way of eliminating spam as defined by each user. Much of the criticism over Permission-Based systems is inaccurate or at best applies to a handful of badly implemented systems on the market. While some of the noted issues are valid, they should be viewed as a consequence of the fact that this is a very new approach rather than an inherently bad one.

Permission-Based systems are known and have received critical acclaim for performing extremely well. They can indeed block 100% of unwanted spam. Permission-Based systems give the user CONTROL over their inbox by blocking material that an end-user considers spam even though the originator may not have viewed it as spam

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How Permission Based systems work The basic concept is simple. A Permission-Based system typically contains a whitelist of people from whom messages are always allowed and a blacklist of people from whom messages are never allowed.

When an incoming message arrives, the system checks to see whether the address of the incoming message is on the whitelist (in which case the message is approved and automatically available from the users inbox) or on the blacklist (in which case the message is silently deleted – note: the user decides in advance who is on the blacklist, so a message is only automatically deleted when the USER decides it should be deleted).

If the sender is on neither of these lists, the ChoiceMail One user can select the option of having the system send a new message, a query, back to the sender of the original message giving them the ability to prioritize delivery of their message. In the case of ChoiceMail One, the user controls the content of the message and whether the query is sent at all. For most spam messages, the email address associated with the original message is bogus and the query is lost (or bounced back because the sender was “unknown”).

If this was the entire process and all that a Permission-Based system was able to do, then the process would be a problem. For example, mailing list moderators are concerned that upon receiving a message from a mailing list, a Permission-Based system will reply with a query, thereby spamming the entire membership list.

Not all Permission-Based systems are alike. DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail One recognizes that an incoming message is from a mailing list server and never responds with a query. In the worst case, the message will simply remain in unknown sender list for future review. Consider that you should not be getting mail from a mailing list server unless you have already subscribed to it, in which case you can pre-approve messages from that mailing list in advance.

Again, the user takes control of his inbox rather than the spammer. If the user approves the mailing list or promotional email mailing in advance, the user decides what they want to receive and what they don’t and as a result, will not miss any “wanted” messages.

ChoiceMail One has many other features designed to assist in reduce the number of unwanted messages you receive. Permission rules can be used to automatically accept senders coming from known places or whose messages contain predefined codes. Other permission rules can be used to automatically delete messages with objectionable content. ChoiceMail One also has mechanisms for detecting bogus HTML messages and deleting them on the spot.

Support for the Visually-Impaired Community Some Permission-Based systems are not usable by the visually impaired or blind users because they are unable to see the graphic that is used to ensure that a real person is responding. This is simply a function of how a particular Permission-Based system is implemented. Graphics pose problems for blind computer users who may rely on screen reading technology, which is not able to decipher what the graphic says. ChoiceMail One supports the ability to listen to the graphic so that someone who cannot see the numeric sequence can still respond correctly to a query.

When a ChoiceMail One user receives an email from an unknown sender and responds by sending a query back to the sender, the sender then has the option to prioritize the delivery of the message to the ChoiceMail One user by typing in their name, a short description of why they want to communicate and to copy a graphic code to ensure the sender is a real person rather than a computer. DigiPortal has extended this very simple and quick process to the visually-disabled community, by adding a feature that allows blind users to access this code by downloading an audio wav file that reads the code aloud to them. They can then type this information into the box, allowing them to verify the code independently.

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Spoofing responses? Sorry, it can’t be done! Another techno-myth is that spammers can create fake response messages that pass through Permission-Based systems. While some solutions on the market may not be able to combat this, DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail One “knows” to whom it has sent out queries and it will simply throw away responses for which it has not recorded a query. Secondly, ChoiceMail One also throws away responses that don’t come from predefined servers. Finally, the mechanisms used to create responses are highly encrypted so it is not possible for a spammer to respond to a query pretending to be someone else.

More on Mailing Lists Despite the attack of Permission-Based systems on poorly handling mailing lists, the ChoiceMail One anti-spam solution is kind to mailing list servers. The ChoiceMail One system recognizes incoming mail from mailing lists and does not send a query back. The concerns of the listserv community are unwarranted.

ChoiceMail One knows to whom it sent queries and it will simply throw away a response that does not come back from anyone else. Secondly, the responses can only be generated by DigiPortal servers and ChoiceMail One will simply ignore responses that come from anywhere else. Finally, the underlying information needed to create the responses is highly encrypted.

Spammers cannot fake the first Received header in an email message. This header normally contains the name of the mailing list server and the name of your SMTP server. It then becomes a simple solution to create a permission rule that checks this header to verify the authenticity of a message purporting to be from a mailing list to which you subscribe. Therefore, if a Permission-Based system is designed correctly, there is no problem handling mailing lists.

It is not possible for spammers to generate fake responses with the ChoiceMail One system. ChoiceMail One has several redundant layers of protection specifically to protect users from this theoretical threat.

It is important to understand that when someone sends an email to a ChoiceMail One user, even though ChoiceMail One is preventing that message from reaching your email application, you are still able to use the ChoiceMail One user interface (and for the upcoming version (already running our field trials) you can use a web browser or wireless device) to see all the mail that is being held by ChoiceMail One pending approval.

At that point you can preview messages from senders who have not responded to (or seen) the query message. In particular, when you preview them, you do it using our "Safe Message Previewer" which NEVER triggers a web bug or activates a virus. That way, you can check an email that you THINK is from someone you know and not accidentally screw up your computer (virus) or let a spammer know that you looked at a spam message (web bug).

ChoiceMail One is also able to apply permission rules to dump stuff that it can guarantee is spam (vs. "thinking" it's "probably" spam) so as to reduce the actual number of querys that go out. We know from significant feedback that our users have approached ChoiceMail One in different ways.

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How People use ChoiceMail One differently 1) Some users NEVER look at the ChoiceMail One user interface unless they KNOW that an email is coming (such as from an online vendor so that they can immediately approve it) and operate on the assumption that if an unknown sender doesn’t bother to go through the query process, then their message is not worth seeing.

2) Others leave the query process enabled but still review their unknown sender list periodically so that they can pre-approve new people quickly if they can determine that it's legitimate (which they can do by previewing etc). Note that one can sort the unknown sender list by date so you only need to look at the top few items each time.

3) Still others disable the query process and just review the unknown sender list quite often.

The mode that you use really depends on your situation. Most consumers have a pretty well-defined set of people with whom they correspond and rarely get mail from unknown people (other than spammers). They will typically use mode one. People who are in business and want to make sure that they don't miss something important will use mode two. One benefit is that people who actually register will get noticed more quickly because of the popup alert but NOBODY'S emails get lost. Finally some users want to monitor all of their email or are not comfortable sending queries to unknown senders; they use ChoiceMail One's blocking feature to block new messages (remember that known people always come through) and they leave the CMO interface visible all the time so they can monitor their messages.

For Those Who Don’t Like the Pop-Up Screen Remember that sending the query message is an option that the user can turn on or off. For the majority of people who truly wish to eliminate the growing number of daily junk email messages, using the query message is their preferred choice. For those who have more time to manage their email boxes and would prefer to select certain filters and rules, they can choose that option.

If everyone looked at the long term gain of taking a few seconds to fill in an “occasional” pop up window to cut out the hundreds of unwanted messages crippling in-boxes, we could collectively put an end to spammers who have begun to control our desktops rather than the other way around. Bear in mind that very few people should in fact receive a query considering that everyone listed in your address book or your database are automatically pre-approved. You can individually choose to disapprove a handful of people if you wish. If the person has not been added to the pre-approved list yet, they are asked to fill in the form ONCE. The ten second process is a minor interim step to take if it helps eliminate spam for all of us.

The query is a considerable benefit in the long run. Consider this: email has become a critical part of our lives yet an incredible amount of time is wasted dealing with unnecessary information, to say nothing of stuff that should be handled through different mechanisms such as newsgroups for discussions rather than mailing lists so that the recipient can look at the information at a time of his/her own choosing rather than often being interrupted with (frankly) unimportant garbage.

The query mechanism adds a useful "prioritization" to the mix. For example, “if I don't know you and you send me a message but don't want to take the few seconds to respond to the query, you have implicitly decided (as you indicate) that your message is not that important.”

ChoiceMail One gives the user the control of his/her desktop not the spammer. And we think that’s progress!

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ChoiceMail One Overview ChoiceMail One stands out as a leader among email software products that filter spam. Many email filters rely on users to continually establish and maintain rules; the ChoiceMail One anti-spam filtering system is permission based optional features deal effectively with unknown email and special situations.

Many features set ChoiceMail One apart from other products. Highlights include:

• Easy installation – installation wizards make setup and program management a snap. • ChoiceMail One is not a plug-in and therefore works seamlessly with most popular email

programs in the market today, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, Mozilla, and Eudora.

• ChoiceMail One is approval based, which gives you the most complete and effective control over your email inbox. As an option unknown senders must register before you see their email.

• Easy setup lets you create a white list of approved senders by importing your contact list or address book from your email or contact-management software application.

• Your email is quarantined outside your inbox, thereby preventing the accidental activation of viruses and web bugs.

• There’s no need to change your email address as you would with a network based service.

• Unlike filter systems, which block email and sometimes delete it, ChoiceMail One holds unknown mail until the sender either registers or the recipient accepts the message.

• Smart responder — ChoiceMail One’s auto responder ONLY responds to people on your white list. So you can provide contact information (a phone number, say) to people who need to reach you while you’re away without exposing that private information to everyone who sends you a message

• Works with all POP3 accounts as well as various web-based mail systems, including Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, MSN, and AOL accounts. Supports secure password authentication (SPA) and SSL.

• Vanity pages: corporate users often take advantage of our vanity page product where, instead of displaying the default DigiPortal query page, a page is displayed that has the look and feel of the corporate website, complete with images and text to suit the company image. This is an optional service but important for entities that wish to present their own query suitable to their needs.

How ChoiceMail One Works with Your Email Application

Your emailapplication

SMTP server

POP server

Outgoingmessages

Incomingmessages

ChoiceMail

Outgoingmessages Incoming

messages

Your emailapplication

SMTP server

POP server

Outgoingmessages

Incomingmessages

ChoiceMail

Outgoingmessages Incoming

messages

ChoiceMail One is positioned between your email application and the mail server(s) that your email application normally uses. This is accomplished by changing the incoming (POP3) and outgoing (SMTP) server information in your email application so that each points to ChoiceMail One. ChoiceMail One is then configured to connect to your email account(s).

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How ChoiceMail One Prevents Spam from Reaching Your Inbox All the email addresses in your Approved Senders list comprise your whitelist. You can add senders to your whitelist in several ways:

• Manually – You can manually add a sender to your whitelist or your blacklist. For example, if you know you will be receiving an email from john@smith.com, you can manually pre-approve that sender so that he will not be asked to register when he sends you a message.

• Automatic Pre-approval – ChoiceMail One automatically adds a new sender to your whitelist when it detects that you are sending a message to an unknown email address. If that sender is already on one of your other lists (new senders, blacklist, etc), the address will automatically be moved to your whitelist.

• Importing contacts – You can pre-approve senders by importing addresses from your contact list or address book into ChoiceMail One.

• Permission rules – You can create filters to determine the disposition of a new email message based on its content. This is not often needed because of ChoiceMail’s automatic approval system but is sometimes useful for automatically accepting email messages coming from a list server where the sender might be different every time.

The Sender Registration Process When ChoiceMail One receives an email from someone not in your whitelist, ChoiceMail One automatically requires that sender to register with you. (You can turn off this feature if you are not comfortable sending query messages to unknown senders.) When ChoiceMail One receives such a message, it places that sender on a “New Senders” list and sends an automatic reply to the sender, requesting that he or she register. ChoiceMail One temporarily stores the email, pending receipt of the query reply.

Because most junk email is sent using fake email addresses, the steps above are sufficient to eliminate all automated junk mail messages. The registration requests will simply fail to go anywhere, and the sender is eventually deleted from the ChoiceMail One Unknown Senders list.

If the return email address is valid and the query is received by the original sender, the sender registers by going to a webpage and filling in a form explaining who they are and why they wish to contact you. The submitted form is then sent to ChoiceMail One for processing. At this point, the new sender is moved from the “Unknown Senders” list to the list of senders waiting for your approval. If you choose to approve the sender, the email is sent to your inbox and the address is added to your whitelist. If you choose not to approve the sender, the email is eventually moved to the junk box and will be deleted in a few days. You can also choose to permanently reject email from a sender.

System Requirements

Operating System Windows 98SE, NT 4.0, ME, 2000, or XP (Home or Professional)

Memory 64Mb RAM Minimum

Processor 90Mhz or higher

Internet Connection Dial up or TCP/IP

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ChoiceMail One Key Features

Feature Benefit

Client-based You do not have to forward your email to a web service – you can use your existing POP sources directly.

Private Emails are downloaded directly to your PC from your ISP and are not intercepted or stored by a 3rd party, as they would be with server-based solutions.

Works with your email application

ChoiceMail One does not replace your normal email application – you can continue to use your existing email application as long as it is POP3 based.

Preapproval management You can add permission rules to accept or reject senders.

Safe message preview You can preview messages before deciding whether to allow them into your email application. No information is sent back to a spammer when you do this.

Import existing contacts ChoiceMail One can import email addresses from many email applications, so that your existing contacts are preapproved.

Away responder ChoiceMail One can reply automatically to people on your whitelist to let them know their message was received.

Junk box ChoiceMail One saves all deleted mail in a junk box for future review, if required.

Automatic Whitelisting If you send an email to someone for the first time, this email address can be automatically preapproved.

Installation Wizards Installation is quick, simple, and easy. Automatic support for Outlook Express, Outlook 98, 2000, XP, and Eudora.

Multiple Accounts ChoiceMail One works with all your POP accounts, as well as MSN, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL. Users with multiple email addresses can segregate receive email into separate accounts automatically.

Family Friendly Family Friendly features allow parents to exercise control over the email that their children receive. Each user can now have their own ChoiceMail One account and view their own email using password controlled access; parents can control the whiteleist/blacklist and permission rules for the household.

Configurable Download Interval

Users control the length of the email download session. This feature is helpful to dial-up users and road warriors that receive a large quantity of email messages

Preview Accepted emails If you are looking for a specific email message, you can now preview your accepted messages without opening their email application.

Protects Against Email Address Harvesting

Users can modify their email address in the query message. This enhancement provides further control of the content of the query message and prevents their email address from being harvested by spammers

Query forms in multiple languages

ChoiceMail One users in non-English speaking countries can configure ChoiceMail so that the sender sees the query form in a different language.

Getting Started ChoiceMail One requires several short steps to get it working properly with your email account(s).

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1 – Software Installation

1. Insert the ChoiceMail One disc into the CD-ROM drive.

2. Follow the Installer prompts as you would for any Windows program installation. At the ChoiceMail One License Agreement screen, click the Accept button and then click OK.

3. Continue through the setup screens. The User Information screen may already display your name and company. If it does not, fill in these fields appropriately. Click the Next button.

4. The Destination Folder is the location on your hard drive where the ChoiceMail One application will be installed. You can change the Destination Folder or accept the defaults. Click the Next button.

5. In the Select Components screen, choose Run automatically at startup if you want ChoiceMail One to run automatically whenever you run Windows. Choose Add desktop icon if you want an icon on your desktop so you can start ChoiceMail One manually. If you have a permanent connection to the Internet, we recommend that you have ChoiceMail One run automatically. Click the Next button.

6. In the Select Program Manager Group screen, you can accept the default folder name in your Start Programs list where a ChoiceMail One icon will be added. Click the Next button.

7. You should now be at the Start Installation screen. Click the Next button and the ChoiceMail One installation will begin.

8. Once installation completes, you can select the checkbox to view the README file and then click the Finish button. Be sure to read these notes for any last minute updates. You’re now ready to start using ChoiceMail One.

9. On the final screen of the installer, you can choose to launch the program immediately if you wish.

2 - Using the Configuration Wizard to Configure your POP3 Accounts

The first time you use ChoiceMail One, you will be asked if you want to run the Configuration wizard. The Configuration wizard can automatically configure Outlook Express, Eudora (4 and 5), and Outlook 98, 2000 and 2002 email applications. You can also start the Configuration wizard later by choosing Run configuration wizard from the Options menu.

Note: If you are using an email application other than Outlook, Outlook Express, or Eudora, you must manually configure your email program to work with ChoiceMail One.

1. Make sure your email application is closed. If you belong to any email lists, find the addresses before you close your email application, as you’ll need them during the configuration process.

2. Start ChoiceMail One, if it’s not already running. The first time you run ChoiceMail One, it will ask if you’re using a standard email account or a web-based email account, like Yahoo or Hotmail. Click the appropriate radio button and click the OK button.

3. Enter the user name and password you want to use for your ChoiceMail One account.

4. The wizard can import existing email accounts into ChoiceMail One. Select your email application: Outlook Express, Outlook, or Eudora. If you use another email application, select Manual.

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5. The information from your existing accounts, with the exception of your passwords, is imported into ChoiceMail One by the wizard. Verify that the username and incoming server address is correct and enter the password where indicated.

6. Click the Test button to make sure the account is working. A dialog box indicates if the

test was successful.

7. The wizard then presents POP3 information for each account defined in your email application. Repeat the steps above for each email account. You can skip an account and add it later, if you want. When you’re done configuring accounts, click the Next button.

8. After your POP3 account(s) have been configured, the wizard will configure your SMTP server settings. Verify that the username and outgoing server address is correct and enter the password where indicated. Click the Test button to make sure the account is working. A dialog box indicates if the test was successful.

9. The wizard then presents SMTP information for each account defined in your email application. Repeat the steps above for each email account. When you’re done configuring accounts, click the Next button.

10. If you use any email aliases (i.e., another email address that is forwarded to the address you’ve just configured), enter it in the Aliases field and click the Add button. If you belong to any mailing lists, enter the email address of the list and click the Add button. Click the Next button.

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11. Click the Finish button to configure ChoiceMail One with your email application. When

done, ChoiceMail One will ask if you want to import your address book. See Step 5.

3 - Manually Configuring Your POP3 Accounts

If you choose to configure ChoiceMail One and your email application manually, you’ll add each of your email accounts to ChoiceMail One separately. You then select a single account in your email application that communicates with ChoiceMail One. You can add as many POP3 or web accounts to ChoiceMail One as you wish.

1. Make sure you email application is not running

2. Choose Email accounts settings from the Options menu.

3. Click the POP3 accounts tab and enter the information for the first POP3 account: username, password, and source host address. Click the Test button to make sure the account is working.

4. If you use any email aliases or belong to any mailing lists, click the Aliases and Mailing Lists tab and enter the information.

5. Click the OK button.

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4 - Webmail Accounts ChoiceMail One uses your email application to access your Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, or AOL web account(s). You use your email application, rather than your web browser, to send and read your email from these accounts. You can still use your web browser to access these accounts, but ChoiceMail One will not protect you from spam if you use your browser.

1. Make sure your email application is closed.

2. Start ChoiceMail One, if it’s not already running.

3. Choose Add WebMail Account(s) from the Options menu. When the wizard opens, click the Continue button.

4. Add your webmail email address and password. Click the Add button. ChoiceMail One verifies that the information is correct and adds it to the list of configured email addresses.

5. You can add additional web mail accounts. When you’re finished, click Next.

6. Select the email application you use: Outlook Express, Eudora, or Outlook. If you use a different email application or if you’ve already configured your email to work with ChoiceMail One, click the Manual configuration radio button.

7. Click the Finish button.

8. If you haven’t yet configured your email application, enter the email address for the appropriate account where indicated; be certain to include the complete address, including the domain.

9. Enter your password for the account and click the Add button.

10. ChoiceMail One attempts to connect to your account; if successful, the account is added to your list of configured email addresses.

11. Repeat the above steps for additional accounts, if necessary.

5 - Importing Existing Email Addresses You can import your existing email addresses into your ChoiceMail One whitelist so that these senders are pre-approved and all incoming emails from these addresses are automatically accepted.

ChoiceMail One can import email addresses in the following formats:

• Outlook Express (a Windows Address Book) • Eudora • Outlook 98, 2000, and 2002 contact list • Comma-separated file (.csv text file) You can export your address book or contact list

as a comma-separated text file, and then import it into ChoiceMail One.

1. Choose Import address book from the Actions menu.

2. Select the type of file you’re importing and click OK.

3. You may receive a message that a program is trying to access your contact list. Grant approval for ChoiceMail One to access your email program.

4. ChoiceMail One displays a list of your addresses or contacts. You can select the entire list or select just the ones you want to import. Click OK to import the selected email addresses.

All the selected email addresses are now pre-approved and are part of your whitelist.

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Accessing AOL Email through Standard Email Clients When you use ChoiceMail One with AOL, you must use a standard email application, such as Outlook Express, which should already be installed on your computer. You cannot use the AOL interface to access your email messages through ChoiceMail One.

If you are using a popup manager or cookie blocker, you must make sure that cookies are enabled for the AOL website.

If you are using AOL over a dial-up connection, you should continue to start your AOL program to connect you to the Internet. However, once you are connected, minimize the AOL application window and then use an email application such as Outlook Express to access your email.

Running ChoiceMail One for the First Time You should leave ChoiceMail One running all the time. If you did not select this option during installation, you can set this option by choosing Configuration from the Options menu. Select the checkbox next to Auto start ChoiceMail when Windows starts.

If you are using a software firewall product such MacAfee Personal Firewall, Norton Internet Security, Zone Alarm, or Black Ice Defender, you will probably get an alert the first time you run ChoiceMail One. When asked, you should allow ChoiceMail One to both connect to the Internet (so that it can access your incoming email) and to act as a server (so that your own email client can connect to ChoiceMail One). If you don’t see a prompt from your firewall, check your firewall software to make sure that ChoiceMail One is able to connect to the Internet.

Once you have configured ChoiceMail One and it starts running, you will immediately see a message displayed. ChoiceMail One is telling you that although it is ready to start operating, it will not begin downloading any emails from your server until it can verify that your email application is indeed able to communicate with ChoiceMail One. Close the hint window.

You will now see the main ChoiceMail One window on your screen. The red light on the upper right side of the window indicates that ChoiceMail One is currently disabled. It will remain disabled until your email application has successfully connected to it.

Leave ChoiceMail One running, and start the email application that you configured through ChoiceMail One. When it starts up, check for new email, if it does not do this automatically. It’s quite likely that you will be prompted for your password at this point. Enter it normally. Your email application will appear to run as usual but no emails will actually be retrieved. Once your email application has connected successfully to ChoiceMail One, the red light turns green and you will see another message letting you know that ChoiceMail One is now ready to run.

When ChoiceMail One downloads your email for the very first time, it does not attempt to block it, filter it, or send query messages because ChoiceMail One must first download and then remove old messages that may have been left on your server. It would not be appropriate for ChoiceMail One to send a query request in response to an old email. Therefore, if there are old messages on your server, these will all appear again in your email application. Just delete any old messages.

ChoiceMail One never leaves any emails on the server. After this one-time download, Choice-Mail One will begin its task of blocking unknown email messages for you.

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The ChoiceMail One Main Window The ChoiceMail One main window provides several views, so you can quickly see what’s happening with your incoming email messages. Click a tab to open a different view, or choose a view from the Views menu.

Unknown Senders – ChoiceMail One lists all emails received from unknown senders (i.e., email address that are not included in your whitelist). ChoiceMail has sent each email address a query message and is waiting for a response. Normally you should just leave these message in the list – when the query message expiration time has expired, the message is moved to the junk box and will eventually be deleted.

Rejected Senders – ChoiceMail lists all the email addresses you’ve manually rejected on the blacklist. There is no need to reject most messages, as they will be deleted automatically when the query message period expires.

Approved Senders – ChoiceMail lists all approved senders in the whitelist. These include any address from a contact list or email address book you imported, any senders you’ve manually approved, and any senders to whom you’ve sent a message.

All Senders – ChoiceMail lists all senders.

Help – Double-click for information on the current view.

Senders Waiting for Your Approval – ChoiceMail One lists all the email senders who have responded to the query message. You must approve or reject each message.

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When you accept or approve a sender, the sender is added to your whitelist. Accepting an unknown sender means that ChoiceMail One will permit all future emails coming from that sender to pass through to your email application.

If you reject a sender, ChoiceMail One places that sender on your blacklist, and will not permit any email messages from that sender to pass through.

If you delete a sender, it is as if that sender never existed in your system. If that sender subsequently sends you another message, they will get a query asking them to prioritize their message. It is rarely necessary to explicitly delete a sender – a sender who does not register will be deleted automatically, along with all their emails.

If you do not approve a sender, his/her email messages are held up. However, you can manually allow individual email messages from a particular sender to be passed through to your email application while waiting for the sender to register. You can also read a message in the Unknown Senders view.

Accepting and Rejecting Senders You can manually accept or reject a sender using ChoiceMail One’s toolbar. You can also use the Senders menu for a full list of options.

Approve Sender – Click this button to approve a sender in the Unknown Senders list or the Senders Waiting for Your Approval list. ChoiceMail One adds the sender’s email address to the whitelist and accepts all email messages from this sender.

Reject Sender – Click this button to reject a sender in the Unknown Senders list or the Senders Waiting for Your Approval list. ChoiceMail One adds the sender’s email address to the blacklist and deletes all email messages from this sender.

Reject Sender and Send Email – Click this button to reject a sender in the Unknown Senders list or the Senders Waiting for Your Approval list. ChoiceMail One adds the sender’s email address to the blacklist, deletes all email messages from this sender, and sends a response to the sender. ChoiceMail prompts you for a rejection reason that will be sent with the response.

Delete Sender – Click this button to delete the sender from ChoiceMail One. The sender’s email address is removed from all ChoiceMail lists. If this sender sends you another email, ChoiceMail will send an automated query message email as if it were the first time this sender has contacted you.

Manually Approve a Sender – Click this button to approve a sender manually. ChoiceMail will prompt you for an email address and optional name. Use this feature if you’re expecting an email from someone who is not on your whitelist. (You can also approve a domain, such as a company’s domain name, to receive all emails from that domain, regardless of the individual sender.)

Manually Reject a Sender – Click this button to reject a sender manually. ChoiceMail will prompt you for an email address and optional name. Use this feature if you’re expecting an email from someone and you do not wish to receive this email. (You can also reject a domain, such as a company’s domain name, to reject all emails from that domain, regardless of the individual sender.)

Check for Emails – Click this button to have ChoiceMail check your ISP’s server for new emails.

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How ChoiceMail One Works Once you’ve properly configured ChoiceMail and your email application, ChoiceMail One connects to your ISP’s server and checks for new emails. (You can specify how often ChoiceMail connects by setting a preference.)

• If the sender’s email address is included in your whitelist (i.e., list of preapproved senders) or a permission rule, ChoiceMail passes the email directly through to your email application’s inbox.

• If the sender’s email address is included in your blacklist (i.e., list of rejected senders), ChoiceMail deletes the email.

• If the sender’s email address is not included on any ChoiceMail lists or rules, ChoiceMail sends an automatic request that the sender register, and adds the email to the Unknown Senders list. The email message is not sent to your email application. The sender registers by going to a webpage and filling in a form explaining who they are and why they wish to contact you. The submitted form is then received by ChoiceMail One for processing.

• If the sender does not register within a specified number of days (specified by setting a preference), the email is moved to the Junk Box. After another interval, the email is automatically deleted.

• If the sender does register, ChoiceMail displays a notification message, adds the email to the Senders Waiting for Your Approval list, and the icon in the system tray flashes to alert you. You can approve, reject, reject with a reason, or delete the sender using the toolbar buttons.

• If you send a message to a sender who is not included on any ChoiceMail lists, ChoiceMail adds this sender to the whitelist.

• You can preapprove or reject individual senders and/or domains.

• You can set permission rules for accepting and rejecting senders.

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ChoiceMail One provides several meters or indicators so you can immediately see where your email messages are within ChoiceMail.

Top Right Middle Right Status Bar

New Messages Indicator – Indicates the number of unread messages in your inbox. Click this button to open the Message Viewer window and see a list of the messages waiting for you in your email application’s inbox. You can preview your new messages.

Junk Box Indicator – Indicates the number of messages in the junk box that are scheduled for deletion. Click this button to open the Junk Box window and see the contents. You can preview a message, accept or delete a message, and purge all the messages in the Junk Box. (You don’t need to purge them – messages are deleted automatically after a few days.)

Show/Hide Spam-O-Meter – Controls whether the Spam-O-Meter displays at the bottom of the main window. This meter indicates the percentage of messages received today that are unknown, and the percentage of message received that are spam. Click the button again to close the meter.

Show/Hide Sender Filter – Opens the sender filter where you can filter any view by typing a sender’s email address. Only those messages that match your criteria display in the list. Click the button again to close the sender filter.

Show/Hide Summary Panel – Opens the summary panel. Click the button again to close the panel.

Show/Hide Message Information – Expands a list of messages to show the subject of each message. Click the button again to hide the message information. When you turn on this feature and select a message, three additional toolbar

buttons are enabled that let you preview the message without sending information back to the sender, accept an individual message, and delete a message.

Show/Hide Recent Unknown Senders – Filters a list to show only unknown senders received within the past 24 hours.

Unknown Messages Indicator – Indicates the number of senders in the Unknown Senders list. Unknown senders are automatically sent to the Junk Box if they do not register within the allotted time period (the default is 4 days).

Registered Senders Indicator – Indicates the number of senders who have registered and are waiting for approval in the Senders Waiting for Your Approval list.

All Messages Indicator – Indicates the number of unread messages in your email application’s inbox. Double-click the icon to open your default email application.

Automatic Email Checking Indicator – Indicates whether ChoiceMail is checking for new email messages automatically. (You can set the frequency as a preference.) Double-click to enable or disable.

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Automatic Registration Indicator – Indicates whether ChoiceMail is set to send a query message to all unknown senders. Double-click to open the Preferences

window. Select the checkmark next to Never send queries to unknown senders to turn off this feature.

Away Message Indicator – Indicates whether the away message feature is enabled. Hold the mouse over the icon – if it turns green, the away message is

enabled. Double-click the icon to open the Away Message Control window, where you can create new messages and specify to whom you want to send an away

message.

Permission Management ChoiceMail One lets you create rules that can be used to make decisions about new emails automatically. Incoming email messages are processed against email rules to determine their fate. In the important case where an incoming message (including sender information) doesn’t match any email rule, then ChoiceMail One sends a query message back to the sender giving them the opportunity to prioritize the delivery of their message.

Note that in many cases you don’t need to bother creating explicit permissions. If you have imported your existing contacts into ChoiceMail One so that they are preapproved, and you have also enabled ChoiceMail One’s ability to preapprove outgoing senders (the default), then you can just leave it to ChoiceMail One to manage unknown senders without your having to do anything.

On the other hand, you may want to add some explicit permissions to cover some special circumstances. For example, if you have decided that any email coming from the domain ‘junk.com’ is unwanted email; you can add a rule that silently deletes incoming email from any sender from that domain. The only real benefit of doing so is to stop ChoiceMail One from sending query requests to such senders (who are probably spammers anyway). ChoiceMail One will automatically delete bounced queries.

You can choose to add a rule so that all incoming email messages containing a signature unique to your organization are automatically accepted, so that even if such senders are not already on your preapproved list, their messages will get through. Note also that you can manually preapprove an email address in advance if you are expecting a message from someone new and don’t want them to go through the query process.

Approving Domains The simplest form of permission rule is to accept or reject all email messages from a specific domain. For example, you may want to receive all incoming messages from your favorite store or from a travel service. And you might want to reject all messages from an unsatisfactory company.

Choose Allow/Reject all messages from another domain from the Senders menu. You can also choose Permission Management from the Actions menu and click the Accepted/Rejected domains tab. Type the domain in the field at the bottom of the window – ChoiceMail One indicates when you’ve typed a valid domain name. Click the Add button to add the domain to your list of accepted or rejected domains.

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You can use wildcards when specifying a domain name. Use a question mark ? to represent any single character, and use an asterisk * to represent a variable number of characters (including none). Specifying email?.com will block any messages whose domain ends with the name email followed by any single character. A specification of email*.com will block email.com itself as well as domains such as email123.com, emailxyzzy.com and so forth.

If you subscribe to various newsletters from well known services, you should consider adding the domains of those emails to your Accept domains list. Note that you should only use this method if the actual email address of the sender is different each time you receive a newsletter from the same service. If the service always uses the same email address, then it’s sufficient to just approve that particular sender.

Specifying Email Rules You can add new rules to automate the disposition of a new incoming email message. Click the New button on the Message rules tab in the Permission Management dialog window. A new dialog opens where you can add your rules.

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1. Click a tab and enter matching text for any item: From, Subject, Body, To, Cc:, To or Cc, and other message headers.

2. Type the text in the appropriate tab(s).

3. If you enter text in more than one tab, specify if the email must match all the conditions or any of the conditions.

4. Select the rule action: accept message, delete message, approve sender, reject sender, or delete sender.

5. Enter a name for your rule – ChoiceMail One displays the conditions for the new rule you’ve defined.

6. Click OK to save your new email rule.

When You Purchase Something Online When you purchase something from an online store, you’ll usually receive an email notification from the store soon after you make your purchase. Just monitor the Unknown Senders list for a while (sort by date, most recent sender first) and you’ll quickly recognize the legitimate email

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coming from your online vendor. You can then decide whether to approve that particular sender or their domain in general — the former is better because some vendor’s email messages will come from domains that are frequently used by spammers.

Online Billing The process here is much the same as with newsletters except that you may not know when your next bill will come in. If you already have an online account for your utility bill or your mortgage, check your existing email messages to find out the email address used by the billing company. You can then add that sender manually.

Other Useful Information Multiple SMTP Servers If you have defined multiple SMTP servers, you can quickly change the server that ChoiceMail One is using. This feature is useful when you’re traveling and need to use a different SMTP server if you are connected to a different ISP than the one you use normally. Right-click the ChoiceMail icon in the system tray and choose Select SMTP server from the popup menu. Then select the correct server.

You can quickly define a new SMTP server – choose Edit the list from the popup menu.

Click the Add button in the Outgoing mail server section and enter the name of a new SMTP host server. Specify any additional settings required and click OK.

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Server Port Numbers If you have another application that wants to use the same ports as ChoiceMail One uses by default for incoming and outgoing email (for example, older anti-virus products that install email proxies) then you have two choices:

1) Reconfigure the port setting of the other application.

2) Reconfigure the port settings in ChoiceMail One.

In either case, you will have to reconfigure your email application to work with the new ports.

Uninstalling ChoiceMail One To uninstall ChoiceMail One, use the Add/Remove Programs application in the control panel to start the uninstaller.

If you configured your email application settings through the ChoiceMail One configuration wizard, ChoiceMail One takes a snapshot of your original settings before changing them. This information is available to the uninstaller so that if you do decide to uninstall ChoiceMail One, your original email settings will be restored.

• If ChoiceMail One was able to make a snapshot of your email settings when it was first installed, you will be prompted to restore those original settings.

• If you configured your email settings manually, then you will have to reconfigure your email application yourself after uninstalling ChoiceMail One.

Additional Technical Assistance If you still have questions about DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail One anti-spam C/R solution, please visit our website for in-depth support at http://digiportal.com/support/choicemail/index.html.

Access the online help system, FAQs, technical notes, troubleshooting, and tutorial for additional assistance with understanding and using ChoiceMail One.

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