PLEASE CHECK THIS PAGE REGULARLY THROUGH THE END OF OCTOBER

LINKS TO UPDATES WILL BE PLACED HERE AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE

YOU SHOULD READ THIS PAGE COMPLETELY BEFORE LOOKING AT THE UPDATES

UPDATE 10/08/2008 (Transferring old mail)

UPDATE 10/19/2008 (STOPPING mail to old server and moving your address book)

For several months we at Sysmatrix have been working on partnering with Google/Gmail to help with the spam we are all seeing in our email.

Recently it appears the spammers have found a new block of IP addresses to send from. It happens every few years and the spam count through our servers spikes for a couple of months while we track them down and get them blocked.

Spammers collect email addresses through web site sign-ups, by scanning web archives, and by sending out virus/worm programs that infect and collect user's Outlook address books. If you're getting under 100 spams daily right now it means that most of our filters are working for you AND you've kept pretty good control of the address. We have customers who are currently getting 600+ emails daily and I suspect they are 99.9% spam. We also have customers who get *0* spam. I have 22 email addresses, 19 of them get no spam at all because I use them for VERY limited subsets of contacts. the other 3 are getting 30 to 50 per day each.

Rather than continue to fight the rising tide ourselves we are accelerating our partnering with Google for spam handling. They do a VERY good job. As of about 0300 Sunday morning (9/28/2008) PHASE-1 is complete and your mail started getting delivered to both the Sysmatrix direct servers and to the new Google/Gmail Sysmatrix servers. All accounts are now set up in both places. Everyone should make the switch to the new servers as soon as possible following the instructions below.

Those of you who currently use the Sysmatrix webmail system exclusively and have email saved on our local servers -- we will begin migrating the mail from our local servers to the Gmail servers soon. You will not lose any email and the Gmail server will tag the migrated messages with the same folder names that you have set up now.

The local Sysmatrix mail servers will be SHUT DOWN some time in the last week of October so please activate your new email account on the Gmail servers soon by following the instructions below. Your email address WILL NOT CHANGE, it will still be username@sysmatrix.net. We are simply moving the email service to better handle the flood of spam.

Instructions for activating your account on the new mail servers.

In your web browser go to http://gmail.sysmatrix.net You will see this page:

Log in with your username (without typing the "@sysmatrix.net) and current password. Agree to the terms and activate the new account.

If you are using Outlook Express or some other email client besides direct webmail then continue below, otherwise, if you normally just use the webmail, you are done.

For other POP3 email clients Basic setup info (server names etc.) is available on our support page HERE and Google has generic setup instructions available. Click the "SETTINGS" link again. Click the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" link again. Click the "Configuration instructions" link to open a new window with links to instructions for setting up various email clients to download from the new server. The Google instructions are VERY generic and you'll have to remember to use your SysMatrix email address any place it says to put your "gmail address".

If you are using Outlook Express version 5 or higher on Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows XP then you can download an automatic setup script by clicking this link

THIS SCRIPT WILL NOT WORK FOR WINDOWS VISTA!!!

SysMatrix Outlook Express Auto-Configure Script

Either save it to your computer and run it from there or click the "Run" button after clicking the link above. After running it open Outlook Express and click TOOLS then go to "Send and receive". You will see a new account called "(yourusername)-NewSysMatrix". Click that to make sure it receives email (you will probably get some duplicates that you've already downloaded from the old server). If it works, click TOOLS, click ACCOUNTS, highlight your OLD sysmatrix account and click REMOVE.

After those changes everything will work like it used to. You can log in at http://gmail.sysmatrix.net every once in a while to see what it's catching as spam. Spam that comes in gets tagged as spam and doesn't get downloaded by your email client, it stays on the gmail server for 30 days then gets deleted. If you get any spam downloaded that Google missed then log into the web interface, click the spam in your inbox, and click the "Report Spam" button so Google can learn what it looks like and try to be better at catching it. Email us at support@sysmatrix.net with any problems.

On Sunday, October 19th, we will stop all mail delivery to the old server and mail will be delivered only to the new servers. You will still be able to access the old server but no NEW mail will show up in the inbox. Within a week or two after that we will completely shut down the old servers.

Thank you, Sysmatrix Mail Server Administrator and Support Team