We’re planning to deploy an extra POP server Monday May 27 at 6-7 AM CET to improve performance for POP email clients.
This deployment should not affect services negatively, but please let us know if you do experience any irregularities using POP during or after the specified time.
Using just one email address can make your email communication disorganized because everything ends up in the same folder by default. It can also make you more vulnerable to spam — if your one address is picked up by so-called spambots there isn’t much you can do about it.
Having more than one email address provides great flexibility because you can associate them with the various aspects of your life such as work, school, personal, shopping, etc.
Not only will your email be much easier to organize, but you can use one of the alternative addresses for various online services — some of which might share your address with third parties with or without your consent, thereby attracting spam to your account.
With Runbox you can easily set up multiple email aliases that point to your account. An email alias is simply an alternative to your main email address, and email sent to it will arrive in your account just as if it had been sent to your main address.
You can associate aliases with different email folders in your account by using filters to sort incoming email based on the recipient (alias) address.
This way you can manage several identities or profiles and gain more control over your email. Find out more about aliases or go straight to Account: Aliases in the main menu in your Runbox account to get started.
Runbox even lets you use disposable addresses by adding + and a string of letters and numbers between your username and the @ sign. For instance, if your username is zorro, you can already receive email sent to zorro+whatever@nullrunbox.com.
This means that you can enter for instance zorro+idontwantspam@nullrunbox.com as your email address in a contact form at some online service, and your account will receive email sent to that address just as if it had been sent to your regular address.
You can now filter messages sent to your alias or disposable address to a separate folder, thereby protecting your more important addresses and keeping spam away from your Inbox.
For even more fine-grained filtering, you can include the name of the service you’re leaving your dispaosable email address with, and filter email from each service to separate folders.
To find out more about email filters, see the Filter help page.
If you own your own domain, it is possible to use the “catch all” function in Runbox Mail Manager as a way to have unlimited email aliases on that domain. You can even use filters to forward emails to other accounts within Runbox, or to other email providers.
To activate this feature go to Account > Email Hosting and select the catch all check box next to the domains you want activate catch all for, and then click “Save Settings”.
All emails addressed to anything@nulldomainyouown.com will be delivered to your account.
N.B.: Using the catch all function can attract more spam, but it is possible to control this (see below).
We will soon write another blog post about using catch all alongside filters to provide aliases for various uses, and how to control spam that using the catch all function might attract.
Over the past 8-10 days we have seen a significant surge in incoming spam, especially about weight loss.
We are working to reject more of this type of spam centrally, and hope to have achieved this as of today.
But if your account is still severely affected, there are things you can do to improve the situation meanwhile:
Most of our customers report that their spam filter does catch the spam, but that going through the Spam folder looking for legitimate messages becomes too big a task due to the large number of spam messages.
If this is affecting you, please see the following article on how to set up an extra filter to separate the very obvious spam from the messages the spam filter is less certain about and that you should review manually: https://help.runbox.com/avoid-sorting-through-spam-for-legitimate-email/
If your spam filter doesn’t catch this type of spam, please make sure that your Trainable Spam Filter is enabled in Manager:Filter, and that you train any missed spam mails using the Report Spam button.
In today’s world of constant communication, being able to pick up your email on the go lets you stay in touch with your workplace, family, and friends regardless of where you are.
Not only does this let you stay connected in case an important message is sent to you while you’re on the road, but perhaps equally important: You can spend idle time, for instance at an airport or on a train, to stay ahead of your email communication and avoid getting a backlog which you’ll have to process once you get to a computer.
With a Smartphone, for instance an Apple iPhone, checking your Runbox email on the go becomes a pure pleasure. If you set up your phone to use Runbox via IMAP, you will stay completely synchronized with the server and any other computers that are configured in the same way. You can find detailed instructions on how to set up Runbox on an iPhone in our Help section.
Since you can connect to Runbox in a multitude of ways and from virtually any location anywhere in the world, it’s important to be aware of how to manage your communication as efficiently as possible. For instance, it can be helpful to check email regularly and at certain times to avoid it disrupting work and life too much. More on this in later posts!
With Runbox, all your email is stored securely on our servers and is accessible to you wherever you might be located, regardless of the computer or device you happen to be using.
The easiest and most direct access method is the Runbox Webmail, which immediately provides a complete overview of the folders and messages in your account.
Webmail is easily the fastest method too, because Runbox is a database accelerated system. On the servers, all the key information about each message (sender, subject, date/time, etc) is stored in a database. The Runbox Webmail just has to poll the database instead of checking the content of each message to display the message overview in a folder, which is what IMAP and POP would have to do.
If you want to download email to your computer, mobile phone, or tablet, consider using IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) instead of POP. IMAP allows your email client to stay completely synchronized with all your folders on the server while also downloading messages locally.
IMAP not only synchronizes the messages themselves, but also the read/unread status and flags of each message. It will even copy messages you send from your device to the server’s Sent folder.
POP (Post Office Protocol), on the other hand, can only download from one folder (usually the Inbox) at a time, and can be set to delete the messages from the server so that they can’t be accessed from another device.
The combination of Webmail and IMAP is ideal if you use more than one computer or device, if you’re traveling, and if you’d like to stay connected wherever you may be.
You’ll never have to be without your email again!
After more than 10 years of running a professional email service, we have gained a lot of experience on using email effectively and efficiently. And we know about many of the mistakes that can be made when it comes to email.
So in this blog series we’d like to let you in on some of the tips and tricks that will let you use email like a professional!
Many Apple Mail users have been having problems connecting to Runbox via POP recently due to Apple changing the supported authentication methods in Mail.
Apple Mail POP users can now use the server name apop.runbox.com to connect to Runbox.
If you use Apple Mail with POP (not IMAP), please do this:
Your Runbox account should now be able to receive email. If not, please try restarting Apple Mail.
There are some who are concerned about US authorities’ ability to monitor their citizens’ data. According to the EU report “Fighting cyber crime and protecting privacy in the cloud” (PDF, 1.3 MB), a little known piece of legislation could give US authorities the right to access foreign users’ data stored in the US as well.
Data stored outside the US, for instance in Norway where all the Runbox email servers are located, is not affected by this legislation.
If you have any concerns about the privacy of your Runbox email, please see our Privacy Policy and our article Email Privacy and Offshore Email.
As previously announced we’re now taking down one of the application servers in order to upgrade it.
Most likely only some users will be affected while others can keep using the email service normally while the upgrade takes place.
We will keep you updated here as the work progresses.
UPDATE 08:22 CET: We have installed the Flash Cache and are rebooting the server.
UPDATE 08:32 CET: We’re reconfiguring the server to work with the new Flash Cache.
UPDATE 09:00 CET: We’ve encountered some complications and will try a couple more things before reverting.
UPDATE 09:41 CET: We have problems with the upgraded kernel/network card combo and are trying to solve this now. We apologize for going outside the scheduled downtime window.
UPDATE 10:24 CET: We’re now installing a new network card to resolve incompatibilities.
UPDATE 11:01 CET: We’re still working hard to resolve remaining conflicts. Meanwhile, you can use the new Runbox 6 Webmail at https://rmm6.runbox.com, but note that some users won’t be able to open messages until we finish the upgrade.
UPDATE 11:17 CET: We are back up and fully operational again. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused by the prolonged downtime.
UPDATE 13:50 CET: It seems we forgot to remove the redirect on runbox.no. This is fixed now! www.runbox.no
In order to improve the performance of our email services we will perform a server upgrade with the scheduled downtime window:
*** Wednesday, February 6 at 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM CET ***
(7:00-8:00 GMT / 2:00-3:00 AM EST / 11:00-12:00 AM Feb 5 PST)
This means that the Runbox email services to be unavailable for up to 1 hour while the upgrade take place.
The downtime should be outside business hours for most of our customers, but we know you depend on your Runbox email and we will work as efficiently as possible. It shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes, but the downtime window is set to 1 hour to be safe.
Incoming email will be queued on our servers and will be delivered once our system is fully operational again.
If you usually check your email during this time, please log on either well before or after that interval on Wednesday.
To keep updated you can check our Blog at http://blog.runbox.com and Twitter at
https://twitter.com/Runbox.
We are installing a Flash Cache on one of our application servers to improve the performance of disk access when email clients open email on the server.
This is done as a measure to increase the I/O (input/output) capacity of the server until we acquire new and more powerful servers.
We apologize if the upgrade causes any inconvenience for you and appreciate your understanding!
Thank you,
The Runbox Team
