In answer to the question “Where have all my deleted items gone?” - the answer really should be “Well, they were deleted”.

Here is a tip - when using email, don’t store essential files in your deleted items folder - or treat it as a long term mail archive (hoping to keep your inbox size small !?). Having recently switched on the “clear deleted items on exit” group policy I was faced with explaining to some pretty irritated users that the deleted items folder is for … well … deleted items. Deleted items are typically items that you don’t want anymore - at least that’s what I thought - but what do I know.

I hope there aren’t any group policies dealing with the sent items folder.

GFI have recently launched version 6 of MailArchiver with a new plug-in for Outlook that allows end users to get hold of their archived mail - all without leaving the email application.

As a keen user of MailArchiver I downloaded the upgrade the moment I heard about it. The application installed painlessly and once configured leapt into action offering users access to years of mail archive history. I am hoping this will encourage our user base to finally let go of some of their older mail that is starting to really clog up lonely Exchange Server.

You can read more about it here GFI MailArchiver 6 gets a bright Outlook.

I currently have nineteen to choose from. My e-mail address is what I refer to of course and which one in use depends on what I am doing at any particular time.

It seems that over a long period of time my email activities (and associated email address) have become context based. I have e-mail accounts for work, home, social networking, my various Blogs and hobbies/interests and some from long ago services that I just cannot bring myself to let go. The email interface varies from email account to email account, some use Outlook, others are web based whilst one or two are mobile push solutions. Very rarely do they cross over so checking emails these days becomes a long task of logging on to various systems and remembering their various quirks and inconsistencies. I could forward them all to one address but I really do not want them cramming up one inbox - what I really need now of course is a system to manage my email systems.

It makes me wonder what the most number of active email address any one individual may have?

Following up from my previous post When spam is not spam. Dare I say that we think we may have started getting spam under control. Fighting the ever increasing influx of spam (Guess What … SPAM is on the increase) is becoming a hefty challenge but we have come up with a combined approach that is starting to work. This combines an internal employee white-list with a trading partner white-list, a managed spam keyword black-list, an internally managed keyword black-list, a virus checker and several other scans all built into a multi-tier incoming email analysis system. It took some time to set up but the number of spam emails that we know we can delete automatically has increased whilst the number of false positives has dramatically reduced. In real terms, instead of having to trawl through almost ten thousand quarantined emails per day it is down to just over one thousand.

Mind you we now have a new problem. In addition to dealing with “spam that is not spam” we now have to find a way to defend against emails that “should not be spam but are spam”. Imagine this scenario, the internal email recipient is one the white-list, the trading partner is on the white-list, the attachment is an accepted format and the email passes the keywords check but it has a series of joke images and text that then get flooded around our business internally? How do we deal with that? This stuff gets stored in multiple places, archived, backed up, printed out, before being forwarded to ‘x’ number of additional recipients and don’t get me started on those “forward this email to ten of your friends” e-mails. What is that answer? Ask our big important customers to stop sending us spam? I can just imagine the conversation:

Customer: “We will forward our order by email shortly”

Us: “Thank you very much, oh and by the way…”

Customer: “Yes?”

Us: “Would you please tell your staff to stop sending us spam”

Customer: “What?”

Us: “Yes, we don’t mind the nice order but please stop barraging us with all the other rubbish”

It is a surprise that there are large well known companies out there that seemingly have very little policies on dealing with spam sent by their employees.

Sex, Drugs and the Spam Patrol - How many plasters until the next loophole?

I imagine that some genuine hard working companies must really struggle to ply their trade online due to Spam. Replica watch manufacturers, legal pharmaceutical vendors, Bling (whatever that may be) vendors, electronic postcard providers and financial institutions must get a really hard time online, oh and don’t even get me started on honest lottery providers or online game developers. Since I wrote the last two sentences 53 emails have been stopped by our Spam filter and are awaiting further analysis. But what exactly qualifies as Spam? Spam, at least in our business, is becoming a universal word to describe pretty much any undesirable incoming email - but the term undesirable is somewhat indefinable and used very loosely to cover a multitude of different things that can, and frequently do, arrive at our mail gateway.

I have no idea whether any of these ‘Spam’ mails are genuine online retailers who simply wish to electronically ‘drop a leaflet through the door’ to make us aware of their products or whether they are villainous rogues with dark intentions. This is primarily because our email filter has automatically picked up certain trigger words (amongst other scenarios) and stopped the stuff at the border so we can all rest easy. As for their ultimate fate at the border patrol, these emails are destined for the big ‘waste of bandwidth’ cyber-land-fill somewhere in the ether.

I feel really sorry for the budding entrepreneur who steps into the dragons den with their great new idea of making medicinal aids available for purchase online or who have great plans to start a new kind of Euro sweepstakes service via the Internet; because these people’s communications are (hopefully) never going to make it into our business.

That said, the trickiest Spam we have to deal with at the moment are those that arrive with non-english language content. Up until recently it has been fairly easy to analyse emails that arrive in my native language, but some emails have recently starting appearing in different languages - something that even the Spam patrol is struggling to deal with. How long before we have to include ‘must be multi-lingual’ in the IT security job specification? Or are we heading for a time when we can no longer keep the door, le porte, die Tür, orドア secure?

I even wonder if this Blog post will ever see light of day due to some of the words used within, oh and by the way, the 53 is now 124. 

Nokia e61i, Blackberry 8820, Apple iPhone, Windows Smartphone or something else?

In our business email has reached critical mass and the time has come to take it mobile. It’s a revolution in our little world almost as big as the introduction of the mobile phone itself. We already implemented Exchange Server 2007 but now I need to decide which direction to go for our field based personnel. Currently they have a mix of old but reliable Nokia based phones that pretty much just make and receive calls and send and receive SMS - but email on the road is rapidly becoming a requirement.

Looking at what’s available and even more importantly what I can get my hands on for testing I have this shortlist.

• Existing standard mobile phone (I have a Sony Ericsson K800i)
• Nokia e61i (we already have one in test)
• Blackberry 8820 (I recently won one in a prize draw)
• Apple iPhone (someone I know has one that I may be able to experiment with)
• Windows Smartphone (I may be able to get my hands on one for a while)

So the choices are there - unless there is a device I’ve missed of course.

Moving forward I guess the first thing is to decide what we want to achieve:

• make and receive calls
• send and receive SMS
• Send and receive email - preferably using Push with Exchange Server 2007 (preferably headers with the body an option)
• Use Wi-Fi if available to keep the costs down
• Have a decent battery life
• Be easy to use
• Open Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and PDF files
• Keep costs low

As we already have Exchange Server 2007 I am leaning towards using Exchange with Direct Push. The Nokia has a downloadable sync feature with Exchange and I am currently experimenting with that however the end user is using the standard pull facility for email (not without the odd quirk such as deleted emails remaining on the device!). The Blackberry, I believe, requires a dedicated node (BES Server) which could become a problem and the iPhone is on a single network at present which limits its appeal somewhat - though to use one is almost an emotional experience! I have always found battery life on Windows Smartphone’s to be somewhat short but I admit I haven’t used any of the recent ones (I gave up with my iMate JasJar last year because it was just soooo slow).

Have you successfully implemented a mobile email solution? Have you any advice/tips? Have you field tested or are you using any of the above (or any other) devices? If so, how have you got on with them?