steez said:
I am a new employee working for the city, and I am not able to receive
outside email. I can receive city emails and emails from my co-workers, but
I am unable to receive emails from a yahoo mail account. Any help would be
great. Thanks.
Many companies will filter out e-mails that originate from freebie e-mail
providers, like Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail (and often filter out e-mails that
originate from aliasing providers, like sneakemail.com and spamgourmet.com)
because real businesses don't use freebie and unsupported e-mail services or
try to hide behind redirection. While Yahoo and Hotmail do have paid
accounts, they still do not require any real identification of those users
(and the identity for the credit card payment is not enforced or imprinted
upon those paid accounts). SBC/ATT contract with Yahoo to provide their
e-mail services but, again, that is a tiny percentage of all e-mail traffic
generated from Yahoo's mail servers. No anti-spam filter can detect if a
Yahoo or Hotmail account is a paid account nor can they [easily or reliably]
detect if Yahoo is providing e-mail services for some ISP.
Also, you should NOT be using your employer's e-mail services for your
personal e-mail traffic, anyway. Remember that all of its content belongs
to your employer and can also have negative impact on your employer. You
are using and wasting THEIR resources for your personal e-mails. You should
be connecting to your own personal e-mail account either with a local e-mail
client or with the provider's webmail client to access your personal e-mail
account while at work. Keep separate your business and personal e-mails by
keeping separate the accounts, servers, and other resources used for each.
As an example, let's say you mention something derogatory about your
department or company. Your employer can sniff all traffic on their network
plus they obviously can see all content that goes in or out through their
mail server. The e-mail can impact the image of your company based on your
personal opinion. You might get a call from the IT dept or your manager
asking why you disparage the company that pays you. It could go on your
employment record. The content of your e-mails could be collected without
notifying you even at the time of your annual review but could affect your
continued employment or whether you get a raise or demotion.
Yes, the company can probably still sniff out your e-mail traffic to your
personal account at a non-company e-mail provider but you won't get into hot
water unless that content shows you are spying on your company, divulging
secrets, releasing code, or otherwise harming your company. That you use
SSL to connect to your outside e-mail provider usually only means the login
credentials are secured, not the rest of your e-mail traffic which is
usually sent as plain text. You need to ask your e-mail provider if they
continue the SSL connection after the login authentication when using a
local e-mail client or notice if HTTPS continues being used after the login
to encrypt the web traffic that contains your e-mail data (Yahoo and Hotmail
use HTTPS for the login but just HTTP for their webmail client's pages while
Gmail uses HTTPS for both the login and webmail client).
If your company permits you to connect to outside web sites (over port 80)
then you can use the webmail client to your *personal* e-mail account where
you should be receiving and sending your *personal* e-mails. Your company
might not want you using THEIR resources for your personal e-mails, just
like they don't want you spending hours yakking on their telephones to
prattle with your friends. When you leave that job, all those personal
e-mails that you put onto their mail server, in their backups, and in files
on their workstations are their property and might be considered theft if
you make a copy (since you will be taking copies of your personal AND work
e-mails away from their control). Keep separate your personal and work
accounts. Not only does it help you protect yourself but it shows respect
for your employer.
