Category Archives: Technical
Block login attacks with abuseIPDB
VPOP3 will automatically block IP addresses which repeatedly try to log in with an incorrect username or password. However, to prevent blocking users who accidentally enter the wrong details for too long, this usually just blocks the IP address for a few minutes (the default is 30 minutes). There is an online database at https://www.abuseipdb.com/ […]
Read More...Two Factor Authentication
VPOP3 v7.8 supports Two Factor Authentication (2FA or TFA) for Webmail/admin access. What is Two Factor Authentication Two Factor Authentication requires the logging in user to enter their password as well as a one-time-password generated by an app or program which uses a special algorithm and a ‘secret’ to calculate the one-time-password. This means that […]
Read More...DMARC
VPOP3 v7.8 adds DMARC checking support, so this post is to give you more information about DMARC. Note that to have VPOP3 check incoming messages using DMARC, it must receive messages using direct incoming SMTP (not via a third party’s SMTP server, and not from a POP3 mailbox) and you must have either VPOP3 Enterprise or […]
Read More...Duplicate messages in Outlook 2016 when using POP3
There was an update to Outlook 2016 in February 2016 which appears to have caused a problem where it will repeatedly download messages from the POP3 mailserver. This is NOT a problem with VPOP3, and there is nothing that VPOP3 can do about the problem. See this link for more information: http://www.howto-outlook.com/news/outlook-2016-pop3-duplicates-february-2016.htm In summary, some […]
Read More...What to do about .DOC / .XLS malware emails
There are currently large amounts of ‘spam’ emails being sent containing .DOC and .XLS files. These files are sometimes almost benign just containing a spam message, but often contain macros which can do malicious things, such as downloading viruses from the Internet when the files are opened. These files seem to be very difficult for virus scanners […]
Read More...MS SQL Server Replication failure
The Problem I’ve just spent two days trying to resolve a problem where our Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database had stopped replicating. We noticed that recent records were in the master database, but not in the replica database. Everything seemed to be OK, with no errors being reported, but the replication monitor kept saying “No replicated transactions […]
Read More...Branch-office VPNs over Virgin Media Business
We use “branch-office VPNs” (which use IPSec) through our Watchguard firewalls to link sites together. At our main office we have three broadband connections for redundancy – one with Zen Internet (18Mbps), one with Virgin Media (50Mbps) and one with Combined Business Systems (18Mbps – mainly used for VoIP). We have always used the Zen […]
Read More...NETLOGON and SYSVOL shares not present on new AD DC
We have been trying to migrate a customer from Windows 2003 SBS to Windows 2012 R2 Essentials, because of the looming End-of-Support deadline for Windows Server 2003 in July. Everything appeared to run OK until it came time to demote the old SBS server using DCPromo in advance of removing it from the network totally. […]
Read More...Advanced Autoresponders in VPOP3
Autoresponders (or ‘Out of office replies’) are supported by VPOP3. This article explains some of the advanced features of VPOP3’s autoresponders. Autoresponders can be set by administrators by editing the user in the settings, and going to the Autoresponder tab, or by the user themselves by logging into their VPOP3 Webmail account and going to Tools -> Autoresponder. […]
Read More...Background log writer
The diagnostic log files which VPOP3 generates can add a lot of extra disk load to a VPOP3 server. For this reason, VPOP3 doesn’t usually write data to the log files as soon as the event happens. The log file entries are held in memory until the “background log file writer” gets around to it, […]
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