Email - Frequently Asked Questions

How can I check my email?

You can either check your mail using a mail client, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or you can check your mail through our website at www.clara.net/pop/. If you would like to use a mail client, we have guides showing you how to set up your mail on the most popular software here.

How can I redirect my email to another account?
How do I create an automatic reply to emails while I am on holiday?

You can redirect mail from your Claranet email address to another address, or create an automatic reply to emails while you are away using mail filters at http://post-office.clara.net/mail_filter/. However, email accounts will be temporarily suspended if they are not checked for 120 days, so if you choose to redirect your mail to another address, please be sure to log in to your account occasionally to keep it active.

Do you have any spam filters?

Yes, you can set your account to delete any spam on our servers before you download your mail to your mail client. Please visit our mail filters at http://post-office.clara.net/mail_filter/ and refer to the help files for a detailed guide on how to have your mail checked against a number of open-source spam databases. You can choose to either immediately delete spam, or have it redirected to a different email address.

I seem to be receiving email addressed to other people. Why is this?

When you receive an email, you can see who it is from, the date it was sent, and the address it was sent to. However, the "to" and "from" fields that you see are just for display purposes. An email is actually made up of a dozen or so different parts (you may see this referred to as the "full headers" of an email), and the genuine "to" and "from" fields are included within this. This is why, if ever an email is BCC'd (Blind Carbon Copied) to you, or if you are a member of a mailing list, you will see that the "to" email address is different from your own.

Sadly, spammers use this functionality to trick people into believing that their account is broken, or has been hijacked. If you ever see an email in your inbox that appears to have been sent to someone else, there is nothing to worry about. It is possible to set up a mail filter to delete any email that is not addressed to you, but this will also stop mail being BCCd to you, and will delete many emails from mailing lists, so please be careful when creating such a filter.

Why have I suddenly started to receive lots of "message
delivery failed" messages?

These type of messages are called bouncebacks, and they occur when an email is sent to an address that either does not exist, or is unreachable. If you are receiving a flood of these messages when you have sent no email yourself, then there are two possibilities. The first is that your email address is being spoofed by a spammer, in the manner mentioned above. If this is the case, sadly there is little you can do to stop this, though you may be able to find the source of the email from the full headers of the message - this should be quoted in the body of the bounceback message.

The second reason is that you have a worm or virus on your machine that is using your computer to send out multiple unsolicited emails. Please be sure that you are running a high-quality, up-to-date firewall program, and a modern up-to-date anti-virus package.

How can I view the full headers of an email I receive?

There is a detailed guide outlining how to extract these headers at Spamcop's website, http://spamcop.com/help_with_headers/, that deals with all popular email clients. Spamcop maintain one of the many open source databases that we use to check spam, so it is worth considering reporting any spam you receive to Spamcop.

How big is my email inbox?

Theoretically, we do not impose a limit on the size of your mailbox, and we have many customers who store many hundreds of megabytes of information on our servers. If your mailbox expands to a size that we feel reduces the functionality of our servers, then we reserve the right to contact you and request that you remove some mail, but we will never delete any of your files without first contacting you.

For this reason, please be sure that we always have up-to-date contact information for you. If you would ever like to update your contact information, please email us at: support@claranet.

How can I get a second email address?

When customer’s create a trial dial-up account, this also creates a free email address. You are free to create as many email addresses as you wish; all that we ask is that you use these dial-up accounts to connect to the internet, just for one second. The reason for this is so that we can verify you are a real person. Sadly spammers write malicious computer programs that can sign up for multiple email addresses, so by using your account to connect to the internet, we will know that your account is genuine.

Alternatively, you can use what is known as an alias on your email address. If you have the email address test@clara.co.uk, then your account will also accept mail that is sent to chris@test.clara.co.uk, john@test.clara.co.uk, abc_123@test.clara.co.uk and so on. All these emails will be sent to one inbox, so it is a secure way to give a younger family member an email address, yet still be able to keep track of their on-line activity.

In order to set up an alias in your mail client, all you need to do is change the "username" field in your mail client to the full email address, such as chris@test.clara.co.uk. This will only extract the mail sent specifically to this address from your inbox, and ignore any other emails. Please be sure to check your actual mailbox regularly, so that your mailbox does not become too full, and affect the speed at which your mail downloads.

Will my email account close if I do not use it?

Yes, although you can safely go for a few months without having to check your mail. Claranet email addresses will be temporarily suspended if they are not used for 120 days, to prevent spam from accumulating on our servers. An email address can be re-opened by logging into our webmail at www.clara.net/pop/ (dial up customers must redial a connection to the Internet using the account username and password). When an account is suspended, no email will be accepted to that address. If your account is suspended, we will automatically email you instructions as to how to retrieve your email when you log back into your account.

I am having difficulty sending email - why is this?

If you are using Claranet to connect to the Internet, and you are using a mail client such as Outlook to check your mail, you are welcome to use our outgoing mail server relay.clara.net, to send e-mail. However, if you are not using Claranet to connect, you will need to contact your internet provider for the address of their outgoing mail server. The reason for this is that, although your mail will always come from us, we only allow people that we can physically trace to use our mail servers to send mail. The majority of spam is sent through the servers of companies who do not limit the use of their servers.
Many budget Internet providers do not inform you that they block access to their outgoing mail servers for any email address that does not belong to them. If you find that your Internet provider does not allow you to send mail from your Claranet email address using their mail servers, you can sign up for our News and Mail service, which allows you to use our mail servers by adding extra verification information into the settings in your mail client. Please contact us for more information on this service, and for assistance in setting this up.

You will always be able to send mail through our website, at www.clara.net/pop/.