Details

Quick Outline: How UseBestMail Treats Your Mail

The Deluge:

There is a flood of mail waiting for you on your mail server. Most of it is spam. Here we describe in detail how the mail is handled, assuming that you are using all of UseBestMail's features. Note, however, that several of these features are optional.

Preliminaries:

Mail is not downloaded from the server until it is validated. When you click the 'Download New Mail' or equivalent button on your email program, UseBestMail examines all the mail on the server before your email program sees it. This mail is categorized as follows:

Stamped - from another UseBestMail user. The user's stamp has been validated.
Questionable - stamped mail received but the system could not validate the stamp due to server being unavailable.
Whitelist - from someone on your personal whitelist.
Pending - for which a challenge has been sent, but not yet returned.
Unknown - isn't stamped, on the whitelist, or challenged yet.
Deletable - either a challenge was responded to by a non-delivery message or the holding time has expired.
Match Information - non-delivery notice that matches a 'Pending' message.
Information - a non-delivery notice has been received which doesn't match up with a 'Pending' message.
Response - a challenge has been responded to, but the original message is no longer being held on the server.

You can choose to download everything immediately and not hold it on the server. In this case UseBestMail will mark the subject line of each message with a letter representing its status, reporting the 'Unknown' messages as [B] for bad. This allows you to direct these messages into a junk folder if you wish. If you choose this option, however, the challenge/response and preview functions are not available.

Preview:

You have the option but not the duty to preview the preliminary status of your server's mail before you download anything. This feature allows you to over-rule UseBestMail's automatic procedures. For example, you can force-downloading of a message, remove it from the server or add it to the whitelist.

Downloading:

When you download your mail you will get the following in your inbox, or using rules in your mail program you can direct each type of mail, below, to a folder or folders you specify. The category of mail is designated by a letter in the subject of the message. So for example, stamped mail is [G] for 'good' and whitelist mail is marked with a [W].

Stamped - verified stamped mail
Questionable - non-verified stamped mail
Whitelist - mail from senders on your whitelist
Information - generated messages, usually non-delivery notices.
Response - a rare event in which a challenge is answered too late. Gives you information to re-contact sender if you wish.

These messages are automatically deleted from the mail server and never reach your computer:

Deletable - messages that match returning non-delivery notices.
Match Information - the non-delivery notice used in the match above.
Expired - message pending for more than time limit you set.

These messages will receive a challenge message, changing their status to 'Pending'. While pending they will remain on the server until validated, manually downloaded, automatically or manually deleted.

Unknown - a challenge is generated and sent back to the original message sender, and the message is added to the 'Pending' list.

These messages will remain waiting on the mail server:

Pending - messages waiting for validation via response to challenge or manually being added to whitelist, downloaded (force-download) or manually deleted from the server.

Outgoing:

Mail you send out from UseBestMail is automatically stamped. This means that anyone else who has UseBestMail can receive and validate your message immediately.

Outgoing mail addresses are also automatically added to your whitelist, with the presumption that you wouldn't mind hearing back from anyone you send mail to. You can manually add to or remove address from the whitelist at any time.