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Posts Tagged ‘dns’

How to Tell Who Supports SMTP TLS for Email Transmission

Tuesday, January 27th, 2015

SMTP TLS (Transport Layer Security) is the mechanism by which two email servers, when communicating, can automatically negotiate an encrypted channel between them so that the emails transmitted are secured from eavesdroppers.

It is becoming ever more important to use a company that supports TLS for email transmission as more and more banks, health care, and other organizations who have any kind of security policy are requiring their vendors and clients to use this type of encryption for emailed communications with them. Additionally, if your email provider supports TLS for email transmission, and you are communicating with people whose providers do also, then you can be reasonably sure that all of the email traffic between you and them will be encrypted.

How do you find out if someone to whom you are sending email uses a provider who’s servers support TLS-encrypted communications? We will take you through the whole process step-by-step, but first let us note some 6 important truths about TLS connection encryption.

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8 Ways to Protect yourself from Forged/Fake Email

Monday, January 26th, 2015

The Internet is rife with fake and forged email.  Typically these are email messages that appear to be from a friend, relative, business acquaintance, or vendor that ask you to do something.  If you trust that the message is really from this person, you are much more likely to take whatever action is requested — often to your detriment.

These are forms of social engineering — the “bad guys” trying to establish a trusted context so that you will give them information or perform actions that you otherwise would not or should not do.

Here we address some of the actions you can take to protect yourself from these attacks as best as possible.  We’ll present these in the order of increasing complexity / technical difficulty.

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Where’s the Email? Diagnosing and Resolving Issues with Missing Email

Monday, December 1st, 2014

In many ways, the Internet is still like the Wild Wild West. Email messages sent to you or from you can and do “go missing” for no apparent reason.  This can happen no matter what email provider you use. So, what happened to these “AWOL” messages?  How can you diagnose and solve the problem?

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Dangers of Private Domain Registration and WHOIS Masking

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014

Any time you register a domain name, you must provide valid contact information for the domain owner. This information is published and made publically available in the “WHOIS” database. Anyone can look there to see who owns the domain and contact the domain owner if necessary.

Private Domain Registration is also called WHOIS Masking or contact privacy. It is a service offered by some domain registrars where they will either (a) not publish the domain owner’s contact details or will (b) publish “masked” details — i.e., details that point to anonymous names and addresses at the registrar.

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Understanding Domain Name Service (DNS)

Friday, October 11th, 2013

DNS (Domain Name Service) is as fundamental to email and web services as address books and published street addresses and phone numbers are to other types of communications.  Without them, it is difficult to connect with new people and organizations and it is even inconvenient to communicate with your friends and family.

In this article, we cover the basic concepts involved in Domain Name Service (DNS) and domain registration, so that you can understand how they are involved in email and web hosting services.

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