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| Frequently Asked Questions - If the questions below could not answer you, please contact us at help@alumni.cuhk.net |
| 1. What is the Email Forwarding System (EFS)? |
| 2. What if I forget my password? |
| 3. It seems that sometimes the EFS account could forward emails, but sometimes couldn't. What is the problem? |
| 4. Unable to login EFS with CWEM password. |
| 5. Why is there delay in receiving email via EFS? |
| 6. How EFS server stops the spammed emails? |
| 7. What to do when receiving lots of spam? |
| 8. How come they know my email address and send me "junk mails"? |
| 9. What to do when virus attacks my email or uses My Name to spam? |
| 10. Can I use my alumni address to send out emails? |
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1. What
is the Email Forwarding System ? |
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| An introduction and benefits of the EFS are documented in this link: http://www.alumni.cuhk.edu.hk/eng/privileges/connection/emaildetail.html |
| 2. What
if I forget my password? If you have forgotten your password, please click here to apply for a new one. |
| 3.
It seems that sometimes
the EFS account could forward emails, but sometimes couldn't. What
is the problem? Unless the EFS server is down, all incoming emails are immediately forwarded to their target email accounts once they are arrived. The most possible reasons that make an email fail to be forwarded via EFS are: i. The sender is using an email server that is spotted by the EFS server as a spammed server, therefore, all emails come from the spammed server will not be sent out. In such case, the sender may need to contact his/her services provider to clarify the situation. ii. The receiver's email server has problem, such as the malfunctioning of the email server, receiver's email box quota overflow, or even the unknown receiver email account. All emails sent to the receiver will be queued in the receiver's email server and sometimes this may cause a delay for several hours to several days. Users are advised to contact their email service providers to check for the status of their email servers. |
| 4. Unable to login EFS with CWEM password. Only those current year graduates are requested to sign on with their CWEM passwords for provisional registration before the CWEM password is expired. The password should be the one that is used one month before the expiry date of student ID card. Therefore, graduates are required to memorize the old password if it was changed during this period. However, if you still cannot login the system, please leave us a message to helpdesk@alumni.cuhk.net, and staying your name and HKID number clearly. We shall response to you as soon as possible. |
| 5. Why is
there delay in receiving email via EFS? It is normal for a certain delay in receiving email in almost every email system. The reasons are: i. The sender's email server has too many emails waiting for dispatch, therefore, it may take a certain period of time to stay in the sending queue. This may also happen to the receiver’s email server when there are a lot of emails pending in the receiving queue. ii. The receiver's email server has failure and the service provider needs to spend time to swap the malfunctioned server to a normal one. Depending on the complicity of the failure, the time required for swapping a server usually may varied from half a day to several days.As EFS does not store up the incoming emails, and it almost immediately forwards them to the destined email boxes, the delay should be neglected. In most cases, delays are caused by the receiver's email server. It is advised that user should contact the email service provider directly if the delay is serious. |
| 6. How EFS server
stops the spammed emails? The EFS server already has antispam function installed. Like other antispam software, it never catches every spam, but will reject an innocent email once in a long while. It checks the IP address of an incoming email, and if it is blacklisted by www.spamcop.net, it will consider it to be a spam and reject it, so it will never be forwarded to the EFS user. Since there is no antispam software catches every spam, users are advised to use a cocktail remedy, so each antispam component (e.g. Netscape 7.1) catches some spams missed by others, and increasing the hit rate. |
| 7. What
to do when Receiving lots of spam? We are sorry that spam (junk mail) has become a fact of life, and it will stay with us, so let us use remedies that can diminish their annoyance to a tolerable level. First, you can use your own mail client (e.g. Outlook Express) to filter away mails you consider worthless: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/itsc/network/app/email/filter/ The latest Netscape (version 7.1, http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp) has built-in artificial intelligence to let you train it to recognize spam. For every spam you receive, you click an icon to teach Netscape it is a spam, and after you have taught it for like 100 mails, it begins to recognize further incoming spams pretty accurately, and can sort them automatically into your junk folder or delete them. Bonus: the filter works for virus too; all you need is to train it to recognize those virus emails as junk too. Details are in the dropdown menu, Help/Index/spam. Ignore the From: and To: addresses; most often, such information in a spam are totally forged, to mislead those who want to find the spammer. If you want to find out who sent it to you--so you may complain to their ISP--you must see all the Received: headers of the email: http://spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html and then analyse it with a good spam analyser, e.g. http://www.spamid.net/ |
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8.How come they know my email address and send me
"junk mails"?
Email address for all users of ...@alumni.cuhk.net are restricted for the use of the Alumni Affairs Office and for alumni related purposes only. The data are kept confidential and would not be released to outside parties. It is not easy to trace from where the junk mail sender has got your email address. There could be many possible ways. For Example, 1. User's email box has been attacked by virus which illegally forwards his/her email address to other parties. 2. User has sent an email to someone, however, the recipient is attacked by virus which illegally releases the email addresses in the recipient's phone book to other parties. 3. User has registered to some websites by using his/her email address, and these websites have other usage on its email address captured with or without prior notice to the user. If you want to filter away mails you consider worthless, pls refer to Q.7 |
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9. What to do when virus attacks my email or uses My Name to spam? |
Unfortunately, many modern viruses use real user name and eaddr as the sender, to gain the trust of recipients, so if one of your email correspondents is infected, your eaddr may be found by the virus, to be used as Sender, in their virus emails sent out to the world. Be assured, if a spam or virus email uses your name as the Sender, it does NOT mean that your computer or account is broken or security is breached. Since there are thousands and thousands of spam and virus emails going on every hour, it is impossible to hunt down even a small portion effectively. To reduce their annoyance to us, let us filter away the bounced back messages, as explained above. You may also report them to their ISP, and if enough people report, their ISP may take action faster, depending on how much they value their reputation. (The followings are some websites you may
find the latest information of the email virus) |
| 10. Can I use my alumni address to send
out emails? As you are aware of, the @alumni.cuhk.net address is a forwarding address. User will continue to send out emails vis his/her Internet Service Provider. Some email programmes, however, may allow the user to set the return address on his/her message to something other than the sending address. By setting his/her return address to the @alumni.cuhk.net address, his/her email will appear to come from the .net address. Different email programmes have different settings on return address. The following is a sample on the steps of changing return address in the "Outlook Express". For more details, the user is advised to consult his/her Internet Service Provider. Tools
à
Account à
Mail Select
the email accourt (if you have more than one account) à
Properties |
Last updated on: February 18, 2004
