Two-Factor logins require users to

1. Enter their username and password properly (the 1st factor)
2. Authenticate a second way (e.g. by entering a code delivered to their mobile phones).

LuxSci has long supported SPF for inbound and outbound email.  SPF is a mechanism by which you can specify what servers are permitted to send email for your domain … and identify email from other places that may be fraudulent. This helps stop inbound Spam and helps ensure that your own messages are distinguished from any fraudulently sent ones by your recipients.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is the other standard for preventing email forgery.  DKIM works by cryptographically signing each email message sent.  The recipients can use information published in your DNS settings to verify if the message was sent from an approved location (e.g. the signature is valid) and that it has not been modified in transit.

LuxSci now supports DKIM for both inbound and outbound email.

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Generally, when you send an email message and it fails to be delivered, you get a “bounce back” to inform you of this.  This delivery failure notification system is inherent in the way email works and does a good job, in general.  However, it has some serious limitations:

• The failure notice is spam filtered or otherwise lost, you will never know the message wasn’t delivered.
• Email spoofing is prevalent and that can cause you to receive all kinds of “backscatter” failure notices about messages that you never sent.  As a result, you may be blocking or deleting failure messages or may merely not notice a real failure notice amidst the back scatter garbage.
• The failure messages are long and in varied formats.  It may be difficult for the average person to determine the actual reason for the failure.
• If you have many failure messages (e.g. because you are sending out a newsletter) it is hard to convert a bunch of failure messages into a list of failed recipients together with the reasons for the failures.
• It is not simple for a manager to get reports of send failures by his/her staff … which may be very important so that business opportunities are not lost.

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What happened to that email message that I sent 3 days ago?  It “never arrived!”.

Our Support team fields this kind of question on a daily basis.  Usually the message never arrived because the address was misspelled, the message was never actually sent, or it was filtered by the recipient’s servers.  There are many other reasons why messages “disappear” as well.

Customers sending email to mailing lists (e.g. those using LuxSci High Volume services), often want an easy way to find out what addresses failed and why, and to know for sure what messages were delivered properly.

Now, LuxSci customers can see for themselves exactly what messages have been sent and track them to learn what the disposition of any particular message to any recipient is at any time.  The new reporting tools are fast, easy, and no longer require the assistance of Support.

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Many major Internet Service Providers (e.g. AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Comcast, etc.) have FBLs “feedback loops” for reporting SPAM complaints by their users.  I.e. if a user “marks a message as Spam”, information about that message and the fact that it was considered “Spam” by the recipient can be sent back to the originating email server, for example LuxSci.

LuxSci has participated in feedback loops for a long time .  Now we have greatly extended our participation by:

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LuxSci has released a set of user password security features that complement many of its existing password security options so that, as a whole, they meet the needs of any kind of password security requirement.

This post reviews many of the existing password security options and highlights the new ones.

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LuxSci has just increased the maximum supported email message size to 200 Megabytes (from the previous limit of 100 Megabytes).  This 200MB message size limits is significantly larger than any other email competitive email provider and ensures that you can receive messages sent from any sender and that you can send very large files between users of LuxSci without problems.

This 200 Megabyte limits includes:

• Receipt of email up to 200 MB in encoded size
• Sending messages via SMTP (i.e. from Outlook) up to 200 MB in encoded size
• Inbound Premium Email Filtering for messages up to 200MB in encoded size

Many times when a customer fills out a form on your website, they want a copy for their own records. Providing this copy of the submitted data often takes manual effort on your behalf to search your inbox, WebAides Documents, or database, extract the appropriate file, and email the file as an attachment back to the individual who filled it out.

Of course, this presumes that the submittee entered their email address accurately, and that you send the form back to their correct address. When sending a copy via this method, sensitive information such as medical data that needs to be HIPAA compliant could possibly be sent to the wrong person or insecurely, resulting in a possible breach and violation!

Now, with LuxSci SecureForm it is easy to provide the person submitting the form a copy securely, automatically and immediately after they submit your form.

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Email message recipients can look at the source or headers of a received message and determine such things as:

• What servers sent it
• What programs were used to send it
• What companies were involved in the sending

Often our High Volume Bulk Mailing customers do not want recipients to know that they are using LuxSci or High Volume — they would prefer that the sending be “branded” so that it looks like messages are coming from their own service and servers.

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Apple iOS v5 for iPad and iPhone is out!  iCloud is great, allowing easy synchronization of your Apple devices and limited synch with Outlook.

For easy synchronization of your iPhone, iPad, and all other mobile devices (i.e. Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile) and LuxSci’s WebAide collaboration tools (Tasks / Calendars / Contacts), LuxSci MobileSync is still the best way to go.

Apple iOS5 with LuxSci Mobile Sync:

• Still supports multiple calendar and contact list synchronizations
• Still supports mail synchronization, Push email, and secure sending
• New – Supports automatic synchronization of iOS “Reminders” with WebAide Task Lists
• New – Create new email folders from the Mail application
• New – Calendar events now support separate time zones for each event, making collaboration with folks in differing time zones much easier.
• New – Flag Support. The “Flagged” status of email messages now synchronizes
• New – Offline email move and delete.  If you move or delete mail while disconnected, these operations will now be performed when your device reconnects
• Updated – Improves notification to users of new mail and other items
• Updated – Server-side email folder searching has been improved.

Additionally, with LuxSci WebAideSync, you can also have your Calendars/Tasks/Contacts automatically synchronized with Microsoft Outlook as well.