If you are allowing Mozilla FireFox or Thunderbird to remember passwords to web sites and/or email accounts in their Password Manager tool, you should know that these passwords are all stored in a plain text file (base64 encoded) on your computer’s disk drive.  This file is accessible to anyone with administrative access to your computer.  If you have any concerns about the possibility of other people accessing your computer and this gaining easy access to copies of the passwords that you are using, you really need to employ the “Master Password” feature of these programs.

Read the rest of this post »

LuxSci is a small and efficiently run company that is focused on and specializes in premium email services.  While we do not have “our own” data centers like some of the “big boys”; we utilize the services of one of the most respected and reliable managed server providers around — Rackspace.  We have been with Rackspace for 8 years. Prior to that we tried out a few of the cheaper providers and found that the support and/or the quality of the hardware and network was not up to our standards.  Rackspace is like an extension of our IT department, helping us to provide the most reliable and redundant services available.

One of our long time clients has remarked that we have a “formula for success” that we shouldn’t change.  We attribute this to the combination of our software, our people, and our infrastructure. In this article, we’ll discuss how LuxSci utilizes Rackspace and how our software and support solutions are complemented and enhanced by Rackspace’s reliability, security, and support.

Read the rest of this post »

Continuing with the recent changes to the LuxSci Xpress mobile portal, the User Profile, Preferences, and Email Tools areas have been streamlined to fit on most mobile devices’ and phones’ web browsers.  This allows users to easily configure their individual WebMail or WebAide preferences, adjust spam filter settings, setup autoresponders or taglines, and update their contact info or login password — all from the palm of their hand.

The only pages that remain to be updated in the Xpress portal are the Links, Notes, and eJournals premium WebAides.  These are currently being revised for both the Xpress and the Full portals; the streamlined and updated versions of these WebAides will be released within the next month or so.

LuxSci is serious about the quick and efficient delivery of all email sent by our clients. We take extra steps to ensure that our servers sending outbound email are not blacklisted.  Indeed, while it is impossible to never get on any blacklist (unless you are not sending email), we have very rarely been blocked; in theses cases, we have quickly re-routed email around the blocks to ensure delivery until the block is removed.

(Note that this article applies to our premium email hosting services, and not to our separate High Volume outbound email services).

How do we stay off of the blacklists?

Read the rest of this post »

If you have multiple accounts with LuxSci and would like to consolidate billing so that you pay for all of your accounts via one “main” account,  an “automatic balance transfer” feature is now available.

The way this works is that we “link up” your accounts at your request so that any balance due on a “dependent” account is automatically marked paid on that account and transferred to your “main” account.  Then, you can pay the consolidated balance on the main account either automatically using our standard payment methods of credit card, PayPal, check or wire transfer.

Read the rest of this post »

It’s the classic problem of having “too many keys”.  You have accounts on many different web sites.  Some are small and relatively insignificant, from a security point of view, like blogs or shopping sites.  Some are large and sensitive, like banking and PayPal accounts.  Since unified login mechanisms like OpenID are not yet pervasive, you must remember the usernames and passwords for every single site.  This is a truly daunting task.

Ideally, you would like to use passwords that are “strong” (i.e. very good, not easily guessable) and different for every site.  However, how can you remember each secure and unique password without resorting to a “cheat sheet”?

Read the rest of this post »

LuxSci’s Passwords WebAide, which has been extensively updated,  makes it quick and easy to securely store all of your numerous passwords in one central location, and to share access to these with other users on a per-password basis, if needed.  We’ve just made it very easy to also export your saved encrypted passwords from the Passwords WebAide.  Use this feature to make your own backups of password lists, plus get printer friendly lists of those passwords to save in a secure location or to use as a reference when updating passwords.

Read the rest of this post »

LuxSci has added a new, often requested feature to its User Groups collaboration tools — the ability to associate an “email address” with the User Group so that all messages sent to that custom email address are forwarded to all members of the User Group.  This is a Group Distribution List.

Read the rest of this post »

LuxSci has re-written its web-based Password management interface from the ground up to provide users with a fast, modern, featureful experience.  The WebAides Passwords user interface now matches that of WebMail, Address Books, Calendars, and User Groups in AJAX-based Web 2.0 speed, data caching, and usability.

The Passwords WebAide provides:

• PGP-Encrypted online storage for all of the user names, passwords, and related information that most people have in abundance for logging in to countless web sites and devices.  Every entry is separately encrypted using PGP.  The PGP certificates are imported by you and/or generated by LuxSci.  There is no need for the passwords to these PGP keys to ever be stored on LuxSci’ servers.  This is a secure online solution.
• Shared access — you can have detailed control of who in your account, if anyone, can decrypt and access which passwords.
• Associated encrypted notes and attachments with each password so that you can store additional related information.

Consider LuxSci’s WebAide Passwords to be an “Online Lockbox” where you can securely store and share all of your passwords.  This Lockbox can be accessed from anywhere that you have Internet access.  The major changes that come along with these user interface enhancements include:

Read the rest of this post »

LuxSci has updated its web-based User Group management interface from the ground up to provide users with a fast, modern, featureful experience.  The User Group WebAides user interface now matches that of WebMail, Address Books, Calendars, Tasks, and Passwords in AJAX-based Web 2.0 speed, data caching, and usability.

User Groups WebAides are very useful in a collaborative environment for:

• Sharing WebAides (i.e. calendars, files, etc.) or email folders with groups of users instead of or in addition to individuals.
• Encrypting individual entries (i.e. files or passwords) such that any group member can decrypt the item, as long as they are a member of the group
• Creating email distribution lists so that it is easy to email everyone in the group.

The major changes that come along with these user interface enhancements include:

Read the rest of this post »