Q: How can I check my email when away from home or dialed in from another ISP?

A: If you are going to do this occasionally, we would recommend using Web email gateway, aka Webmail. The link is located on our home page, and gives you secure (SSL) access to your email via any SSL enabled web browser (all modern browsers are SSL enabled). Here you can read, delete, and send email messages through Valley Internet. If you are going to be reading a lot of email from other locations, we can remove the protection on 'foreign' locations (outside Valley Internet's dialups) reading your email.

Q: How do I send email when connected outside Valley Internet (i.e. Dialed in through another ISP)?

A: You can use Webmail to compose and send the mail. You cannot send SMTP mail (Mail from an email client, such as Outlook Express) through Valley Internet's mail servers from outside Valley Internet's 'domain'. This is to prevent spammers from using us as an open email service. If you wish to send email this way while dialed into another ISP you will have to find out that ISP's mail server address and use it while connected to them.

Q: What is the difference between using Webmail and a normal email client?

A: Webmail functions as an email client, and can be used just like a client to read, write, and delete email. The major differences are that the mail is stored on our servers, rather than downloaded to your machine, so they cannot be accessed while offline, but they can be accessed from other machines easily.

Q: My mail client starts downloading mail and just sits there for a long time (2 min or more), and when I cancel the transfer and try again gives me a message about my email session being locked. What is wrong?

A: You most probably have a truly massive message in your mailbox. 2 megs or more. This message could take hours to download, depending on your connect speed. We suggest:1. Download the message, maybe overnight, if you think it's something you actually want. 2. Trying to use Webmail to go in and read the text associated with the message and, if you don't want what was sent, delete it. 3. If it is too big for Webmail , contact us to have us delete the message. The message about your account being 'locked' means that the connection to our server was not shut down cleanly, and our server is waiting 10 minutes to be sure the connection has been simply dropped.

Q: My email client (usually Outlook Express) is giving me an error message that says 'The server is not responding'. Then I get a message about my email session being locked when I try again. What is wrong?

A: This is usually caused by emails with malformed headers or content in the email causing Outlook Express or another email client to simply stop receiving the email. Unfortunately when it does this it doesn't do it the way most mail servers think things should be done. Our mail server is sitting waiting for your mail client to tell it to continue, and your mail client is waiting for the server to send the next message, and it times out. Most of the time the emails we see that do this are forwarded or responded to many times. There are two options: 1. Call us and have us delete the offending email (count how many emails it got downloaded successfully. The problem will be the next email) 2. Use Webmail, which is much more tolerant of the formatting of emails, to check your mail and delete the offending email yourself.

Q: I am getting the same emails every time I check my mail. Why won't you send me new mail?

A: This is the same problem as the one listed directly above.

Q: What is my POP3 server?

A: Your POP3 server is mail.vallnet.com , all in lower case.

Q: What is my SMTP server?

A: Your SMTP server is mail.vallnet.com , all in lower case.

Q: What is my IMAP server?

A: Due to security issues with the IMAP protocol, we do not support IMAP email. Please use POP3 to retrieve your email.

Q: Why are you disconnecting me after I check my email?

A: You are probably using Outlook Express, and someone has set it to disconnect after sending and receiving email. Go to Tools --> Options, click on the Connections tab, and remove the check box from 'Hang up after sending and receiving email'.

Q: I can't send and/or receive email?

A: Check your email servers. In Outlook Express, Tools --> Accounts, click on the Mail tab, click on your account (so it is highlighted) and click the Properties button. Now go to the Servers tab. There are two boxes labeled incoming and outgoing mail servers. Make sure both of them say mail.vallnet.com . If they do you may need to contact Valley Internet technical support to determine what the problem is.
You can test your ability to successfully send email by emailing tester@vallnet.com. You should receive a response indicating your message was received within 60 seconds. Note: This only works when connected to Valley Internet, or through the Webmail gateway.

Q: I received an email from Postmaster saying that I sent out a virus. What do I do?

A: You may or may not have a virus. Valley Internet filters email viruses, but they can infect your machine by other routes. You may wish to run one of a few online virus scanners such as Housecall Antivirus, Panda Activescan, and Symantec Security Check. Note that some viruses, most notably Klez can spoof or fake the origin email address, so it likely did not come from you, but rather someone who has your email address in their address book, or saw your address on a web site. If you need help, feel free to contact us.

Q: I am receiving a great deal of spam. What can I do?

A: Unfortunately, spam in the last 12 months has increased our mail volume by 40% or more. Fortunately, Valley Internet offers an automatic spam detection/deletion service for a small charge. Please contact us for more details. Alternatively, you can attempt to use the removal addresses, and harass the spam email providers to get yourself removed, but that generally simply allows them to tag you as a 'real live' email address and sell it to others for more, and does nothing beneficial.