Email at UIC: Quick Start

Everyone at UIC, faculty, staff, and registered students, is eligible for a free email account on one of the ACCC email servers. This page outlines the steps you'll need to get started with using these accounts and the other ACCC email services.

Looking to open an ACCC email account? Already have an account on icarus or tigger?

Mailserv is a group of machines that are dedicated to doing email. The email servers on mailserv are better than those on icarus or tigger; for example, the online storage space for your Inbox and other email folders is four times larger on mailserv than tigger. So, if you don't have an email account yet, open it on mailserv. If your email account is on icarus or tigger, why not move it to mailserv? It's easy and there are advantages. See Moving to mailserv.uic.edu.

Do you already have an email account somewhere else that you want to continue using?

No problem. But you will still need to get a UIC netid and choose an ACCC password to use many campus services, and set yournetid@uic.edu email alias to send email to your other account.

Are you already used to doing email with Thunderbird or Outlook or some other email program?

No problem with that either; the info you need to set it up with your ACCC account is in this page. However, we don't support Thunderbird or Outlook and so on and probably won't be able to help you if you have any complicated problems with them.

There are three email "addresses" you will need to know when you do email using your UIC ACCC email account. All three use your netid as your user ID.

yournetid@uic.edu

Your machine-independent UIC email address. And by machine-independent, we mean anywhere, including your gmail or yahoo account. Give this address incoming email and as your return address.

yournetid@mail.uic.edu

Your ACCC secure incoming email address. You must use this email address and secure SSL authentication to check email on your ACCC email account. If you use an ACCC email account, the name of your incoming email server is mail.uic.edu, regardless of what machine you actually have your account on and whether you are using POP or IMAP.
However, this email address is specific to your primary ACCC email account; the one pointed to by yournetid@uic.edu. If your yournetid@uic.edu email account points to an outside account, such as your gmail account, then you can not use your yournetid@mail.uic.edu address.

yournetid@mailserv.uic.edu (or yournetid@tigger.uic.edu or yournetid@icarus.uic.edu)

A machine-specific ACCC email address. People may send email to this address, even though it is not a good idea. If you do not have your yournetid@uic.edu email address pointing to this email address, the only way you can read email on this account is by using WebMail or by logging onto tigger or icarus and using pine.

At UIC, if you use an ACCC email account, the name of your incoming email server is mail.uic.edu, regardless of what machine you actually have your account on and whether you are using POP or IMAP. (There are exceptions, described below.)

The machines available for you to have your email account on are the following:

• Recommended for everyone: mailserv; everyone may use mailserv, an email-only server; incoming email server name, for POP or IMAP, is mailserv.uic.edu
• Students may alternately use icarus; incoming email server name, for POP or IMAP, is icarus.uic.edu
• Faculty and staff may alternately use tigger; incoming email server name, for POP or IMAP, is tigger.uic.edu

Icarus and tigger are "general purpose UNIX servers"; you can compute on them and use them to publish personal, departmental, and class Web pages, and do email on them. Mailserv is for email only, and therefore is much better for email than icarus and tigger.

We recommend you use mailserv for email even if you open an icarus (if you're a student) or tigger account (if you're faculty or staff) for other purposes. If your email account is still on icarus or tigger, why not move it to mailserv? It's easy and there are advantages. See Moving to mailserv.uic.edu.

1. Your mailserv, icarus, or tigger account is identified by your UIC netid. Faculty and staff have to select a netid.
   Step 1 in opening an account for faculty and staff; get your UIC netid. Accounts - Get a Netid
   
   
2. If you don't already have a common password, activate your netid and choose a password:
   Step 2 New people, activate your netid and password. Accounts - Activate Your Netid
   About passwords: how to Select a Secure Password and Changing Your ACCC Password.
   
   
3. Now, if necessary, open an account on mailserv or on icarus if you're a student or on mailserv or on tigger if you're faculty or staff:
   Step 3 Open an ACCC email account. Accounts - Open an ACCC Account

Anyone who uses mailserv, icarus, or tigger as their primary email server -- has their uic.edu email sent to that account -- uses mail.uic.edu for their incoming email server. Sending your netid@uic.edu email to your mailserv, icarus, or tigger account is done automatically as part of the account creation process, or you can do yourself on the Change the Email routing of your netid Web page.

(1) Note: netids are always all lower case.

(2) Student Netids

For example, let's consider Joe Testing, student. Student netids have the form: first initial, first five letters of the last name, followed by an arbitrary number of up to two digits.
So Joe's netid might be: jtesti99

(3) Faculty and Staff Netids

Faculty and staff are allowed to select their own netid; see Getting a UIC Netid for instructions.
For example, let's consider Ada Byron Lovelace, a staff member.
Her netid is: adabyron.

(4) POP3 and IMAP servers name

All three ACCC email servers act as POP (POP3) and IMAP servers for incoming email and no special POP or IMAP server name is needed, just use mail.uic.edu (assuming it's your primary email server).
We recommend you use IMAP; for more information, see IMAP or POP? below.

(5) Setting Up IMAP

If you're using IMAP, the "IMAP location prefix" is: mail/
Don't get this wrong; you'll suffer consequences if you do. Make sure you include the trailing slash. For more information, see IMAP or POP? below. Note that this is a new prefix. The old prefix ( ~yournetid/mail/ ) will still work (and might work in places where the new one doesn't), but the new one is more upwardly compatible.

(6) SMTP Servers See Choosing an Outgoing (SMTP) Server below for more information.

If you are on campus only, you can use this SMTP server: smtpserv.cc.uic.edu
But for many reasons, it's better to use the ACCC's authenticated SMTP server, which works regardless of whether you are on or off campus, and doesn't get banned by SpamCop:
        mail.uic.edu
See Using the mail.uic.edu SMTP Server.
Using mail.uic.edu requires that you authorize yourself -- send you netid and password to the server -- and that you turn on SSL authentication for SMTP. The biggest advantage to using mail.uic.edu is useful because it works both on and off the UIC campus and means that you don't have to create an alternate personality or otherwise change the SMTP server if you use the same computer both on and off campus. See Configuring Eudora for instructions on how to set up mail.uic.edu with Eudora.

(7) Protecting your password with SSL; available for all ACCC email accounts via mail.uic.edu now

When your email program connects to the server to download email, it has to send your netid and password to identify you to the server. SSL, Secure Sockets Layer, allows you to sent your password to the sever encrypted, so no one can steal your password as it is going to the server. (Otherwise it is sent as plain text and is very easy to sniff if someone wants to.) mail.uic.edu allows you to use SSL with your ACCC email account, provided that your netid@uic.edu email goes to that account. Anyone with a UIC netid and ACCC password can use mail.uic.edu as their authenticated SMTP machine, from anywhere, not necessarily on campus, with any email account, not necessarily an ACCC account.

(8) Using your uic.edu email alias

The uic.edu email alias is automatically set to forward to your mailserv account (or icarus or tigger) account when you open it as described above. uic.edu mail alias: What email account do you want to use? explains how to change the email address that your uic.edu email alias points to, both while you're opening your account and at any time after.

In theory, you can use your netid at uic.edu email address as your return address even if you're using a commercial ISP, but more of them lately aren't allowing it. If you have your email program set up with your netid at uic.edu as your return email address and you're having trouble sending email from off-campus, contact your ISP ask them whether they allow foreign return addresses. (And if they don't, ask them why not.)

(9)Using mail.uic.edu as your incoming email machine (and SMTP server also)

The ACCC has now set up mail.uic.edu so that it serves both as the incoming email server for your primary ACCC email account and as an authenticated ACCC SMTP server. This means that you can use the same machine for incoming and outgoing (SMTP) server, which will probably simplify setting up your email program. The special thing about mail.uic.edu is that it requires SSL encryption.

Your ACCC email account will still be on mailserv, icarus, or tigger, so mail.uic.edu is an alias. How will mail.uic.edu choose the actual machine it points to? It is the ACCC machine that your uic.edu incoming email is delivered to. If you don't have your uic.edu email sent to an ACCC machine, you can't use mail.uic.edu for your incoming email. Anyone with a UIC netid and ACCC password can use mail.uic.edu as their authenticated SMTP machine.

(10)If you can't use mail.uic.edu as your incoming email machine,

You will have to use pine or Webmail to read your email directly on mailserv.uic.edu, icarus.uic.edu, or tigger.uic.edu.

The ACCC supports three email programs:

• WebMail, which, as the name implies, is available on the Web. All you need is a Web browser and an Internet connection; just point your browser to: https://webmail.uic.edu/.
• Eudora, site-licenced personal computer program for Windows and Macs.
• Pine, a command on the ACCC's general purpose Unix servers, icarus and tigger.

Which email program should you use?

• If you know how to use a Web browser, WebMail is the easiest. You can also use WebMail to read email from any ACCC email account, regardless of whether you have yournetid@uic.edu email delivered there.
• Pine has a lot of features, but it's a Unix program so it doesn't have "windows" in the personal computer sense. You also have to login to your icarus or tigger account to use it. (That's easy to do in the ACCC public labs; there are icons in the main menus.) You can use pine on icarus or tigger to read email on mailserv; see How to set pine up to read your mailserv email. You can also use pine to read email from any ACCC email account, regardless of whether you have yournetid@uic.edu email delivered there.
• Eudora is a standard Windows/Mac program; if you're good with Windows or Mac OS and if you have a personal computer handy to run it on (it's not available in the ACCC public labs), you'll probably like it best.
• Or you can use some other email program, such as Thunderbird or Outlook. The only problem there is that we don't support them and our ability to help you with any problems you might have with them is limited.

We have a Web page that introduces Mail.app for Mac OS X and we have some documentation on Thunderbird, the email program that goes with Mozilla Firefox.

We recommend that you IMAP rather than POP (POP3). We used to recommend IMAP because POP was not compatible with WebMail, but we have upgraded our POP servers, and POP on mailserv, icarus, and tigger is now also compatible with IMAP and WebMail.

IMAP has many advantages, including providing options to not automatically download attachments. (That means no more downloading worms or viruses; although Mimedefang makes downloading attachments a bit less dangerous.) For a comparison of POP and IMAP, see IMAP: What's New in Electronic Mail.

It is very important to get the "IMAP location prefix" correct when you're setting up any email program to use IMAP. Your IMAP location prefix is: mail/
Make sure you include the trailing slash. Note that this is a new prefix.
The old prefix: ~yournetid/mail/
should still work, and may be required for some programs, but the new one is more upwardly compatible.

For more information on how to set your email program up to use IMAP, see the instructions in Configuring Eudora for IMAP. The details don't apply to other email programs, but the information you need to set any email program up is all there.

The special thing about mail.uic.edu is that it requires SSL encryption, and provides it for tigger and icarus. SSL has been available on mailserv for a long while.

If your email account is on mailserv, icarus, or tigger, you can use mail.uic.edu as your incoming email server, provided that you have your netid@uic.edu email sent to that account. If you have an ACCC email account on more than one machine, how will the actual machine that mail.uic.edu points to be chosen? It is the ACCC machine that your yournetid@uic.edu incoming email is delivered to.

If you don't have your uic.edu email sent to an ACCC machine, you can't use mail.uic.edu for your incoming email. Want to fix that? Use this Web page to Change the Email routing of your netid.

Anyone with a UIC netid and ACCC password can use mail.uic.edu as their authenticated SMTP machine.

Because mail.uic.edu can serve both as the incoming email server for your ACCC email account and as your authenticated ACCC SMTP server, you can use the same machine for incoming and outgoing (SMTP) server. This will probably simplify setting up your email program. Don't forget to turn on SSL as Required, Alternate Port (depending on what port you use for the SMTP service) for both incoming and outgoing email.

Using mail.uic.edu for Your Incoming Email Server and Turning SSL On has instructions on how to set up Eudora and several other email programs for use with mail.uic.edu for incoming email. The general requirements are the following:

• Change the Incoming or IMAP or POP mail server to: mail.uic.edu
  • Change the port to 993 if you're using IMAP or 995 if you're using POP.
    
  • Turn on secure connection or SSL for the POP or IMAP connection.
  • Or sometimes -- such as in Eudora -- you can do both of these by selecting: Required, Alternate Port
    
• If you can not receive your incoming mail, check with your firewall to see whether the port you're using is blocked.
• You might also have to resubscribe to your email folders and reselect the folders for your email rules or filters.

Your best choice is to use the ACCC's authenticated SMTP server, which works regardless of whether you are on or off campus, and whether you're using an ACCC connection (wired, wireless, or dialup) or a commercial ISP:
        mail.uic.edu
Using mail.uic.edu requires that you authorize yourself -- send you netid and password to the server -- and that you turn on SSL authentication for SMTP. The biggest advantage to using mail.uic.edu is useful because it works both on and off campus and means that you don't have to create an alternate personality if you use the same computer both on and off campus. If you are also using mail.uic.edu as your incoming email server, using mail.uic.edu for your outgoing SMTP server also simplifies setting up your email account.

If the computer you're using is always on campus, you can use smtpserv.cc.uic.edu if you wish. We ask that you only use it in cases where you cannot use SSL authentication.

Using the mail.uic.edu Authenticated SMTP Server has instructions on how to set up Eudora and several other email programs for use with mail.uic.edu. The general requirements are the following:

• SMTP or Outgoing mail server: mail.uic.edu
• In case your ISP uses port 25 for itself, we recommend using an alternate port:
  • Use port 587. Turn on SSL for outgoing email. If you have a choice, turn on StartTLS.
  • Use port 465. Turn on SSL. (Not StartTLS, which is newer than just SSL.) Or sometimes -- such as in Eudora -- you can do both of these by selecting: Required, Alternate Port
  • If one port does not work, try another. Some programs will support SSL or StartTLS only, and will do it only on one port.
• Turn on authorization for the SMTP connection.
• In some cases you have to specify the userid and password you're going to use when you log in to mail.uic.edu.

Or you can still go the old way -- if you use a commercial ISP to connect to the Internet, use your ISP's SMTP server when you're using your ISP. The ACCC Web pages Changing to Your ISP's SMTP Server explain why this is necessary. Those pages include instructions on setting SMTP servers on many email programs and have a list of the SMTP servers for many commercial ISPs. Your ISP's SMTP server most likely has the advantage that it won't be authenticated and encrypted and therefore will not require any setting up.

It is important to keep in mind that you have a limited amount of space on your ACCC email account to store email. As mail addressed to your account comes in, it is placed in your Inbox mailbox, and it will stay there indefinitely, until you move it to your personal computer or delete it. When the total amount of email you have in your Inbox exceeds your account's Inbox allotment, new incoming email will be bounced. (Returned to its sender.) Each account has a reasonably large allotment, but if you get a a few -- or even one -- email messages with large attachments, your Inbox can fill up pretty quickly.

You will receive a series of automated messages as the size of your Inbox approaches your Inbox quota.

For the current email quotas for ACCC email servers and instructions on how to find out how big your inbox is, see the Web page: Email Space Limits for ACCC Servers.
The ACCC email quota tool allows you to check how much email you have on the server, or download or delete entire mailboxes.

Email - Quota Tool -- Using the Email Quota Tool and Managing Your Email Account

Let's say that our student, Joe X. Testing, netid jtesti99, came here already doing email at the email address jxt@myisp.com, and he wants to continue using that address. It's important for him to have a uic.edu address, because that's what his instructors will send email to -- they have access to lists of their student's netids. So he needs to set up his netid@uic.edu address to send email to his jxt@myisp.com address.

Let's assume that he's opened an account on icarus because he wants to create a personal Web page. In the last step of the account creation process, after he has opened an icarus account (he doesn't need a mailserv account because he isn't going to use an ACCC account for email) , on the right-hand side of the screen, he'll see:

Email routing: Mail sent to
jtesti99@uic.edu is currently being routed
to jtesti99@icarus.uic.edu.
(change mail routing)

Joe's "uic.edu email alias" defaults to his new icarus account, because that's the only account we know about. If he wants to change it to his myisp.com account, all he has to do is click on the change mail routing link and enter the mail address that he wants email that is sent to his jtesti99@uic.edu email alias sent to. After he does this, when someone sends email to his netid at the "server" uic.edu, we will forward it to his myisp.com email address.

Make sure you don't make any mistakes entering your forwarding address. There isn't any way for us to check it.

You can change your uic.edu email routing at any time. There's a link on the ACCC Email page.

1. Go to the ACCC home page: http://www.accc.uic.edu
2. Click on the purple Email button at the top of the screen.
3. Click the Email - Change netid@uic.edu email forwarding address link.
4. The change applies immediately.

Remember, you can send your netid@uic.edu email to any valid email address. It does not have to be on the UIC campus. Also, make sure the address you enter is correct. We have no way to check its validity.

The ACCC has a number of email tools in addition to the Quota Tool and the uic.edu Email Forwarding tool described above, including Email Filters, which identify spam and email messages with attachments, and can be used to make Automatic Email Vacation Replies, and Email Address Conversion tools. There are links to all these tools on the ACCC Email home page.

The ACCC now applies the anti-spam filters automatically to all email sent to all email addresses that end in uic.edu. This includes netid@uic.edu email which is forwarded to outside email address. Mimedefang is an antivirus tool that identifies attachments with suspicious filetypes, and converts them to text files by adding .txt to the end of their names. Windows will not automatically execute a .txt file, nor will it run if you accidentally (or on purpose) double-click it. (Are you sure this attachment is one that you want to use? The MIMEdefang FAQ has instructions on how to rename it back.)

• On the Web, using Search UIC, at:  http://www.uic.edu/searchUIC.html (or on the UIC World Wide Web home page)
• With the ph command on the ACCC UNIX machines and in Eudora or WebMail. Use ns.uic.edu as your ph server. This is the default server for ph on UNIX and in WebMail, but you will have to specify it on the Configuration menu in Eudora.) (tigger (AIX) ph man page; icarus (Solaris) ph man page)

The information returned about students includes their netid, email address, and major. For faculty and staff, campus address and telephone numbers are also included.

There is also a UIC LDAP server. See Using the UIC LDAP White Pages for instructions on use LDAP with several common email programs.