Please note that this upgrade applies only to our e-mail only accounts. E-mail accounts that are provided with our Your Domain Host web hosting accounts are not affected by this change.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE:
If you”'’re using our Managed DNS service (i.e., your domain name is pointing to our MDNSSERVICE.COM domain nameservers), there”’’s nothing for you to do on your end - no settings will need to be changed, and your mail is completely safe. The only difference you”'’re likely to notice after the upgrade takes place is to our webmail service. It”’’s getting a complete overhaul with a ton of new features that we”'’re confident you”'’ll love.

If your domain name is pointing to any domain nameserver other than the MDNSSERVICE.COM nameservers, you will have to coordinate an MX record change with your DNS provider. If you don”'’t know your current domain nameservers, do a WHOIS lookup on your domain name at http://www.nicforce.net/whois/ . If the domain nameservers are listed as NS1.MDNSSERVICE.COM, NS2.MDNSSERVICE.COM, and NS3.MDNSSERVICE.COM, no action on your part is necessary. If any other nameserver is present, please contact us well before the migration date for additional instructions. Support is available through our automated support desk system located at http://customercare.tnsgroup.com/
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Also changing is the amount of storage that we provide. On the new system, you”'’ll have a full 2GB of storage available to you and you”'’ll be able to send email messages up to 25MB in size. We know that email is being used to send and receive photos and as a hub for your digital communications and offering 2GB of storage means that you can archive those important emails without having to worry about running out of space.

Here are some of the exciting new features

• Anti-spam filtering with spam quarantine and whitelist/blacklist capability
• AJAX-enabled interface with drag-and-drop and a desktop-like experience
• Message preview pane
• Rich-text message composition
• Photo slideshows and built-in audio playback
• Full featured contact manager
• Fast, powerful search
• Multiple language support

We”'’ve put together a series of tutorial videos that will get you familiar with the new webmail, help you manage your email better and show you some of the advanced features that are built in. You can view those video tutorials at: http://email.yourdomainhost.com/demos/

WHAT HAPPENS DURING THE MIGRATION

Step 1: Provisioning
The first thing we do is provision all user mailboxes on the new system. That includes the creation of accounts using the existing accounts and passwords, mail settings and personal address book entries. You can see the list of specific data that will be migrated below.

Step 2: Verification
Next we stop and check to make sure that the mailbox count on the new service matches that of the old service. At this point, the old system is still completely functional and users will continue to login to webmail and send and receive email via POP or IMAP without impact.

Step 3: True-up of Discrepancies
To account for any activity between when we create the accounts on the new system, and when we actually move the data, we do a final check to pickup any changes that were made - this syncs the two systems just prior to the switch over and data move.

Step 4: Mail Content Copy & DNS Changes
Now mail data is copied from the old system to the new service. To be sure things are proceeding properly, we do both data verification on the fly and we also manually spot check random accounts. MX and DNS records are changed at the same time (if you”'’re using our Managed DNS service), and users are sent to the new system automatically. The switch happens without any downtime as both systems run in tandem throughout the process.

Step 5: End Users Login to their New Webmail
When webmail users login, they”'’re greeted with the new interface and all of their mail and contacts. POP and IMAP users probably won”'’t even realize that anything has changed.

Just in case: Backup and Fallback In the unlikely event that anything goes wrong, the old email system is still there as a fallback. As you would expect, we make regular, full backups of all data.

Step 6: Deletion
At a later date, the accounts are deleted from the old system and it”'’ll be decommissioned permanently.

DATA FIELDS THAT WILL BE MIGRATED:

Mailbox types:
* Regular
* Forward only
* Aliases
* Catchalls

User Settings:
* Password
* Timezone
* Language
* From address (account name)
* Forwards

Data:
* Mail content
* Address book content

DATA FIELDS THAT WILL NOT BE MIGRATED:

* Signatures
* Contact Groups
* Distribution Lists
* Reply-to

We hope you enjoy all the new features of our new email service and we appreciate your patience and understanding throughout the process as we make the switch. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us using our automated support desk, located at http://customercare.tnsgroup.com/

Thanks for choosing TNS Group!

Tucows, the service provider who supplies our E-mail Defense service will, effective May 4, 2007, discontinue the portal and quarantine portions of that service. That means that your inbox will still be protected against spam and viruses, but for the time being you will not be able to see junk messages that have been filtered. The primary impact of this decision is that you will not be able to check filtered messages for false-positive rejections, and you will not be able to add or remove addresses to your whitelist or blacklist. Current entries in the Always Allow and Always Deny lists will be maintained as they exist at the time of the disablement of the portal and quarantine.

Tucows'’ decision to remove this portion of the service is the result of a very poorly executed upgrade to the Email Defense service at the beginning of March. Since that “upgrade”, access and reliability of the quarantine has been spotty at best. Tucows developers have been unable to fix the underlying problems with the quarantine system. They have indicated that they will attempt to completely rebuild that segment of the service in hopes of restoring it at some undetermined point in the future. Whether or not they have the ability to do that remains to be seen.

If, over the last 6 weeks, you have been satisifed with the level of filtering and, in particular, the rate of false positive rejections, you may not be adversely affected by this change at all. If, however, you are concerned about the system rejecting valid or legitimate e-mail, please be aware that these changes may render this service unsuitable to your needs. If that’’s the case, we will, of course, issue pro-rated refunds for the balance of your remaining service should you decide to cancel the service.

To deactivate the service, you simply need to point your MX records away from the E-mail Defense servers and back to your primary mail server. To cancel your service, receive your pro-rated refund, and avoid future charges, you will need to submit an authenticated cancellation request using the form located at http://www.yourdomainhost.com/contact/contactcancel2.shtml . If you have multiple services with us (e.g., e-mail hosting plus e-mail defense) please be sure to specify exactly which service you wish to cancel. Refunds will be issued for the E-mail Defense service only; if you cancel other services, those services will remain subject to our standard refund policies.

We are extremely disappointed with the inability of Tucows to provide the level of service they promised, and with the unforgiveably short notice they have provided of the impending change to this product. Please accept our sincere apologies and regrets for any inconvenience caused by this situation.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this issue, please submit a request at our online support center, located at http://customercare.tnsgroup.com/

Thanks for choosing TNS Group!

Periodic billing for existing stand-alone EMD customers has been pro-rated, and the paid service period has been extended by a term prorated to account for the change in pricing.

For more information about the current E-Mail Defense product, visit http://emaildefense.tnsgroup.com/

• Joomla Content Management (1.x)
• Gallery Photo Album (1.x)
• Gallery Photo Album (2.x)
• Web Calendar (1.x)
• FormMail (5.x)
• Wordpress Weblog (2.x)
• phpBB Bulletin Board (2.0.x)
• osCommerce Online Store (2.x)

Zen Cart Online Store (1.3.x)

To install one or more of these applications, simply log into your web control panel and select the Applications menu.

We have installed this new version with a “clean” (i.e., “empty” database) in an effort to help ensure that the previous problems do not reoccur. Unfortunately, this means that all previous data, including user information and previous call records are no longer available.

If you registered for our support desk system prior to December 8, 2006, you will need to re-register on this new system. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

If you experience any problems at all with this support desk, please e-mail us directly at: customercare (at) tnsgroup (dot) com

This situation is not unique to us; it is affecting all internet service providers. For more information on the global impact of spam, see the following articles:

• http://news.digitaltrends.com/article11922.html
• http://www.bizreport.com/2006/12/spam_choking_internet_communications.html
• http://www.crn.com.au/story.aspx?CIID=69923&src=site-marq

In an effort to preserve the integrity of our network and servers, we have been forced to implement blacklist filtering on inbound e-mail. Unfortunately, this may result in the blocking of some legitimate e-mail.

We are working hard to find a better solution to this problem. In the meantime, we can manually whitelist the IPs of valid senders. In order to do this, we need to know the IP address of the blacklisted server. If senders are receiving delivery failure “bounce” messages, this IP should appear in that message. It will also appear in the full internet mail header of the sender’’s e-mail. For instructions on viewing the full internet mail header, see http://spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html

If you believe that one of your correspondent’’s IP has been blacklisted, please send us their mail server IP number, a copy of a bounce message they received, or a copy of the internet mail header from one of their e-mails, and we will add their IP to our whitelist.

We regret the inconvenience caused by this issue.

SpamAssassin is configurable by the individual user through the webmail interface (http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail/). There”’’s a Spam Filtering section in the Options menu. Individual users can disable it entirely, or leave it active and configure it as they like.

The default installation is on, but no e-mail is being deleted. It”””’’s simply prepending *SPAM” to the subject line if it meets the SpamAssassin criteria.

It is not necessary to use the webmail interface to check your e-mail; the filtering will work even for those using Outlook, Eudora, etc. However, the only configuration option is through the webmail interface. If you choose to have the filtering move spam to a separate folder, then you will have to use the webmail interface to access that folder.

In order to enable the configuration options, we had to update PHP to version 4.3.4. If you”'’re running any PHP scripts, you may want to check them to make sure they”'’re still behaving as expected.