It used to be that to send an email, you had very few choices and even less control over what happened once the message was sent, how many emails you could send, or how you connected to the Internet to send email.  Well, times have changed, the Internet has evolved, users are more savvy, and expectations are much higher.

Today, LuxSci offers five different ways to send outbound email, each geared to particular uses and needs.  In this article, we will describe each method, examine the pros and cons, and end with a  feature chart.  Our goal is to make your outbound email shopping experience straightforward and to provide you with an email service appropriate for your needs.

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LuxSci supports OpenID as a mechanism for logging into its web-based user interface.  OpenID allows both a single signon for multiple web sites (so you do not have to remember as many usernames and passwords); it can also enhance the security of your account.

As with most web sites that support OpenID access, LuxSci also permits users to login with their usual username and password — even if OpenID use is enabled.  This is usually a good thing, as it allows users to login if, for some reason, their OpenID is not working.

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You thought email was a simple concept, but you are at once confronted with a plethora of acronyms and jargon like POP, IMAP, WebMail, Aliases, Forwards, SMTP, IMAP, POP, Quota, SPAM, TLS, SSL, Archival, and more! This article describes the ins and outs of email, explains these terms, and helps you figure out what services and features you need from your personal or business email service provider.

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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.

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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.

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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”?

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Everyone always harps on the necessity of privacy when discussing health care, government, and banking communications.  It is surprising how little attention is paid to email security with regards to accounting and tax preparation.   There is a real danger of identity theft, unintended information disclosure, as well as invasion of privacy when using tax preparation services or organizations that do not use secure email.  Why is this?

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LuxSci recently had the opportunity to speak with Nate Fitzgerald, Product Manager of Message Archiving at MX Logic.  Nate has been with MX Logic for over 4 years and is responsible for their successful archival service.  His insight has been invaluable in helping LuxSci get up to speed with all of the technical nuances of this service. We would like to share with you his knowledge and thoughts regarding the security, reliability, and utility of LuxSci’s Premium Email Archival service.

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Frequently, we are asked to verify if an email that someone sent or received was encrypted using SMTP TLS while being transmitted over the Internet.  For example, banks, health care organizations under HIPAA, and other security-aware institutions have a requirement that email be secured at least by TLS encryption from sender to recipient.  This can and should be locked down to ensure that the email message content cannot be eavesdropped upon.  This check, to see if a message was sent securely, is fairly easy to do by looking the the raw headers of the email message in question.  However, it requires some knowledge and experience.  It is actually easier to tell if a recipient’s server supports TLS than to tell if a particular message was securely transmitted.

To see how to analyze a message for its transmission security, we will look at an example email message sent from Gmail to LuxSci, and see that Gmail does not use TLS when sending messages, even when it can.  This indicates that Gmail is probably not a service to be used when you have any kind of encryption requirements.

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LuxSci has allowed use of OpenIDs provided by third parties for access to user accounts since December.  Proper use of OpenIDs can make logging into sites such as LuxSci both faster and more secure.

Now, LuxSci is also an OpenID Provider. This means that you can create an OpenID based on your existing LuxSci account that can be used as a single sign on to any other web site that supports OpenID.

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