Bruce Telecom Email page


What is Email?
What do I need to send E-mail?
What is an E-mail account?
What is an E-mail server?
What is an E-mail address?
What is an E-mail client?
How do I send an E-mail?
How do I receive an E-mail?
What is an attachment?
How do I send an attachment?
Why does my email seem so much slower when I send or receive attachments?
Why does the attachment grow larger than the original file being sent?
Are there restrictions on what can be sent as an attachment?
Why can't I send programs?
What if I need to send a program?
Can't I just rename the file?
What if I need to receive a program?
Where do I find the messageID number?
What if I need to send a file that will be larger than 7.5 Megabytes encoded?
Can I get viruses via email?
Do I still need an antivirus program?
I can't get any attachments, it says OE has removed access?
What is Spam?
Why am I receiving e-mail advertising or junk mail?
Can I send out advertising?
What does Bruce Telecom do to stop junk mail?
What can I do to stop junk mail?
I am still getting some spam, what can I do?
How to I access my Postini Message Centre?
What does pop lock busy mean?
Why do I keep getting the same couple of messages over and over again?
I sent someone a message, why didn't my email get there right away?
Why did my message get returned?
Why am I get returned messages that I didn't send?
What does "work offline" mean?
How do I work offline?
What can I do offline?
Bruce Telecom Email Policies.
How big is my mailbox?
What happens if I exceed the maximum limit for my mailbox?
What happens if my email exceeds the maximum message size?
What about sending advertising information to potential customers?
How many messages can I send in a day?



This is the Email FAQ page for Bruce Telecom.  If you are new to email or have questions about how it works, please read this page through.

    All corporate policy information regarding email  for Bruce Telecom can be found on the Email Policy page.

    Click here if you are looking for a table of  the correct settings for your email service with Bruce Telecom.

What is Email?

What is e-mail? In its simplest form, e-mail is an electronic message, like a letter sent from one computer to another. 

You can think of e-mail as being similar to regular mail, with a To: address, a From: address, and a message.

What do I need to send E-mail?

At a minimum you require a computer, an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a program to send and receive e-mail called an e-mail Client.

What is an E-mail account?

An e-mail account consists of a username and  password which grants you access to the e-mail server of your ISP.

What is an E-mail server?

The email server is a computer at your ISP which receives and holds e-mail that is sent to you.  It also delivers e-mail that you send to other people.

The E-mail server is similar to the Post Office for regular mail.

What is an E-mail address?


An email address usually consists of your e-mail account username followed by the domain name of your ISP.  These two pieces of information are joined by an "@" sign.

Most e-mail addresses for customers of Bruce Telecom take the form <username>@brucetelecom.com.  For example, if your username is wildbill749  then your e-mail address with Bruce Telecom is wildbill749@brucetelecom.com.

You can think of your e-mail address as your name and regular mail street address.  When someone sends you email, the mail server uses your email address to determine which mailbox on the server to put the mail in.

What is an E-mail client?

An email client is a program on your computer which helps you send and receive email.  It may contain an address book to store information on the people you contact regularly, and even tools such as message rules and folders to help you manage your e-mail automatically.

Typically if you are using Windows as your operating system you could use Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook as your email client.  On Mac OS X the client is Mail.  Many other companies also make email clients, for example Eudora and Pegasus.

How do I send an E-mail?

The process for sending email may differ slightly within each e-mail client, but they all follow the same basic steps:

1.  Click the button to start a new message such as "Create", "New", or "Compose"
2.  Enter the e-mail address of the person you wish to send the message to in the "To:" field
3.  Type a brief subject of your message in the field labelled "Subject:".
4.  Write your message in the body space of the new message window.
5.  When you are finished composing your message, click the "Send" button to submit your message to the mail server.

How do I receive E-mail?

Again this can depend on your e-mail client.  Most mail programs will automatically try to check for new mail for you as soon as you start them.  If yours doesn't, or you want to check for new mail again, just press the button indicating, "Send/Recv", "Get Mesgs", or "Check for new mail on...".

If you have new mail it should then appear in the main folder, generally called the Inbox.

What is an attachment?

In addition to plain text e-mail messages, you can send e-mails with some types of files attached.  In this way you can send and receive pictures, sounds, short video clips or work files such as spreadsheets and word processor documents.  An email attachment in a message you have received will usually appear as a paperclip graphic beside the message in your Inbox folder or in the message window itself.

How do I send an attachment?

This process changes with each different e-mail client.  But in general you select "Insert -> File Attachment" or "Attach" from your message menu and then pick the file you want to send. 

Why does my email seem so much slower when I send or receive attachments?

Compared to a text e-mail, any file you attach to an email can be relatively large.  This is especially true if you are trying to send or receive raw digital camera pictures, movie clips, or song files.  When sending these files they must be encoded by your e-mail client and inserted as coded text into the body of your message.  When you receive these types of files they must be decoded as they are received and extracted from the email message so you can access them. 

Why does the attachment grow larger than the original file being sent?

Originally e-mail was text-only and users were not able to send files to one another using e-mail.  Instead they used an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client program to send files.

In order to accomodate the attachment of files to e-mail, a coding method was developed to convert the file to be sent into text that the email system could handle.  This code conversion is called MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension).

The process of encoding an attachment from it's binary form into text for the e-mail system causes it to expand, often by up to as much as 50%.   So a  1 Megabyte file can be come a 1.5 Megabyte attachement when sent via e-mail.  And correspondingly this file will then take 50% longer to send or receive than you might expect it should.

Are there restrictions on what can be sent as an attachment?

Yes there are definately restrictions on what can be sent as an attachment via e-mail.  These restrictions are generally common sense, an enforcement of good Internet etiquette (netiquette),  or as a result of  an administrative action intended to preserve and protect the e-mail system for all users.

Here is an example of netiquette: before sending a file to someone it is a good idea to check that the recipient actually wants the file first, that they have the ability to receive and use the file, and that they can actually accept a file of the size you want to send.

Many people neglect most if not all of this common sense, in their eagerness to use the Internet, or to share files with their friends.  Users on dial-up Internet may experience long delays when receiving email, and therefore may not want your attachment at all.  Sometimes a user may not have the same program that you used to create the file you sent them and therefore can't use the file when you send it.  And many companies block or quarantine all attachments as a matter of corporate security, so their users can't accept attachments in the first place.

Here is a summary of the attachment Rules for Bruce Telecom:

    i) A single e-mail sent to a user or by a user may not exceed 7.5Megabytes.  Remember that attachments are MIME encoded.  Depending on type of file you are trying to send, you may not be able to attach a file larger than 5.0Megabytes due to encoding.
    ii) The soft size limit for your e-mail box is 15Mb.  This means you should only try to accept at most two emails with large attachments at one time, before clearing them off the server.
    iii) The hard limit size of your email box on the system is 25Mb.  This  means if the amount of e-mail sent to you,  that is waiting on the server, exceeds 25 Megabytes the server will stop accepting new mail for you.
          Comparatively, Hotmail will only accept 2 Megabytes of email on a free account..
    iv)  No user may send or receive attachments which are executable in nature, ie programs

Why can't I send programs?

Bruce Telecom has instituted the policy as of June 2004 which states that no user may send or receive executable attachments.   Email that is sent with programs attached will still be delivered, but the attachment will be filtered out. 

The purpose of this policy is twofold:  To protect the user, and to protect the system.

Attachment filtering works in conjuction with the local Antivirus functions offered by Bruce Telecom.  As such it helps protect users who have inadequate virus protection. 

Email is not the only way to get a virus, but it is the most common vector of infection.  Often, when a computer becomes infected, it will attempt to send thousands of emails out to infect other people each time it is brought online.  Computers which are identified as being infected,  are quickly identified, and often blacklisted so no e-mail of any sort will be accepted from them.  Unfortunately sometimes this blacklisting is extended to the entire ISP network where the computer resides.

This is the second purpose of the policy, to protect the email system.  Bruce Telecom removes executable attachments from e-mail to help protect our network and mail server from being blacklisted.  If the mail server get's blacklisted due to one customer, no email mail be sent to or from any customer.  It is this level of serious trouble that the Bruce Telecom seeks to prevent.

What if I need to send a program?

Simple!  Just put the file in a non-executable compressed archive.  Commonly this is called Zipping.  Put your file in a Zip archive and send the zip file as an attachment.  A few programs to do this are Winzip and WinRAR. Note that your attachment must be a non-executable  file, and therefore self-extracting archives will not work.  We all pay for bandwidth, so compressing your file should be common-sense netiquette.

Can't I just rename the file?

No, sorry.  The  attachment scanner doesn't look at the file name, so renaming the file to a .TXT or .DOC file, for example, will not work.  The scanner looks inside the file, and determines it's file type to decide if the attachment is acceptable.

What if I need to receive a program?

If  someone has tried and failed to send you an attachment, you will receive their email, with a notice appended that their attachment was filtered.  At this point you can do one of two things:

    i) Ask them to resend the program in a Zip file.  Most companies do this as a policy anyway.
    ii) Contact the helpdesk at Bruce Telecom with the MessageID number found in the notification you were sent.   A technician can then release the attachment to your e-mail.    A technician cannot and will not release a message without a messageID number.

Where do I find the messageID number?

In the email you receive, the executable attachment will be replaced with a text file entitled "bmts-Attachment-Warning.txt" .

If you open this text file you will find a line which reads, "Note to Help Desk:".  At the end of this line in brackets is the messageID number.   Here is an example:

Note to Help Desk: Look on the bmts MailScanner in /var/spool/MailScanner/quarantine/20040601 (message i51DMB5S025273).

What if I need to send a file that will be larger than 7.5 Megabytes encoded?

If you think you need to send a file which is too big to be accepted by the Bruce Telecom system, please try the following:

    i) Reconsider whether or not you really need to send the file. 
    You may find a joke video very funny and want to share it with your friends.  If you just show it to them the next time they visit, you could increase your chances of staying friends with them by not blocking up their e-mail box.
    ii) Consider changing the format of the file.
    Digital camera's create very large, detailed pictures, suitable for printing.  This format is not suitable for sending in email.  Use your camera photo-editing software to change the picture to a smaller format such as JPEG (.jpg).
    iii) Consider compressing the file.
    Use an archive or zip program to compress the file before attaching it to your e-mail.  Smart Internet users do this as a matter of course.  It's good netiquette.
    iv) Consider sending just a link to the file.
    If you found the file somewhere on the Internet, the wonder of the World Wide Web is that you can just send them the link to or address of that file.

Can I get viruses via email?

Email is the one of the most common methods that a computer virus may use to spread.   Even if you know the person who sent you an attachment, and you use an Antivirus program, you should be careful with all attachments.
Your friend may not know they are infected.  Save the attachment out of the email to a place where you can find it on your computer and then scan it direcly with your Antivirus program.

Bruce Telecom employs two scanning services to protect our customers from viruses:  Postini and ClamAV. 

The Postini services filters junk e-mail and viruses from email sent into the Bruce Telecom system.  ClamAV filters all local mail - e-mail sent by you to other customers and out to the Internet.

Do I still need an antivirus program?

YES!  Email is not the only way to become infected with a virus.  Flaws in your computer's operating system may make it vulnerable to infection just by being on the Internet.  For this reason you should install an antivirus program and keep it up to date.  You should also ensure you regularly check for and install any patches released for your computer by the author of your Operating System. 

I can't get any attachments, it says OE has removed access?

In Outlook Express (OE) version 6.0 and above, the default setting is to deny the user access to any attachments at all.  Microsoft has realized that enabling millions of computers on the Internet to send and receive attachments has caused a global virus problem.

If you need to disable this setting click the Tools Menu and choose Options.  On the Options sheet, click the Security tab and remove the check mark from the box marked, "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened..." , and then click OK.

What is Spam?

Spam is the Internet term used to describe Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE), the electronic version of junk mail or flyers.

Why am I receiving e-mail advertising or junk mail?

At one time the Internet was mostly used by educational institutions and the military.  Back then, the Internet was a friendlier place, and it was common and safe to freely give out your e-mail address to anyone.

As Internet use slowly spread to the general public, corporations, advertisers, and marketers began to see it as a means to quickly and cheaply reach a large target audience.  Soon an entire Industry sprang up revolving around the gathering of email addresses, and using them to advertise products.  Until very recently there was little or no Federal regulation on the practices of gathering e-mail addresses or sending junk mail to them.  This lack of regulation and the unscrupulous actions of advertisers have led to an enormous global spam problem.

You should expect to receive spam e-mail at any address you give out to any corporation for any reason.  You will receive spam if you give your address to a website, if you post to a Usenet newsgroup, a mailing list, or even if one of your friends sends you an electronic greeting card (e-card)

Although most corporations have a privacy policy, which claims they do not divulge your personal information, nearly all policies include a disclaimer that under certain circumstances they share your information with their partners.  Spammers set up websites just to gather your address, by claiming to offer you some service such as a screen saver or jokes or a greeting to your friends.  They also use sophisticated programs to scour USENET postings and web pages to glean the email addresses they contain.

Can I send out advertising?

No.  The sending of  Unsolicted Commercial Email (UCE) is expressly prohibited by the Bruce Telecom Acceptable Use Policy.   Violations of this policy will result in the termination of your account with Bruce Telecom.  Additional information can be found here.

What does Bruce Telecom do to stop junk mail?

Bruce Telecom actively combats Unsolicited Commercial Email (Spam,UCE) in serveral ways:

First, Bruce Telecom adheres to a strictly to our posted Privacy Policy

This policy clearly states that Bruce Telecom will never give out or sell  information about any of our customers, especially their e-mail address.  This is the case because we are a telephone company and as such are legally bound to keep your privacy by CRTC regulations.  The sole exception to this in the event we are contacted by the police.  If  Bruce Telecom is presented with a legal subpoena or active case number by the police we are compelled to reveal information which may identify a customer.

Second, Bruce Telecom employs the services of Postini Corporation. 

 Postini is an independant Virus and Spam filtering service, affiliated with McAfee Associates.  All email sent to Bruce Telecom from outside the system must first pass through the computers of Postini.  There the text of each email is examined and evaluated on serveral criteria such as word proximity and assigned a score.  If the email is found to contain a virus, or one of it's scores exceeds a set threshold, then the message is quarantined in your postini message centre. 

Quarantined email is held for fourteen (14) days after which it is discarded.  You can login to your Postini Message Center at any time and examine the messages trapped there.  If they are all junk you can delete them.  If some messages have been incorrectly quarantined you can deliver them and ensure that particular sender does not get blocked again, by adding them to your approved senders list.  


Third, Bruce Telecom employs three email Black Listing services.

Bruce Telecom's mail server checks the origin of each and every email against the following lists:  Spamcop.net, Spamhaus.org and Abuseat.org These three organizations maintain lists of IP addresses used by known Spammers and computers which are known to be exploited by spammers.  If the an email originates from an address found on one of these lists, it is rejected by the mail server.

What can I do to stop junk mail?

 Believe it or not, your actions alone, largely determine how much spam you will receive over the life of your account.  The biggest single thing you can do to stop spam is simply control who has your email address.  In general you should not give out your e-mail address to any website.  Strictly control what businesses you give your address to, including your bank or insurance company.  If you give your email address to a friend, instruct them specifically that they should not give your e-mail address to anyone or any site without your direct permission - especially greeting card sites and the like.

I am still getting some spam, what can I do?

Inevitably, until there are legislative penalties in Canada, or a 'Don't E-mail' list similar to the Don't Call list in the United states, you will get some junk e-mail.  There are some things you can do about the problem:

First, login to your postini message centre to review and modify your spam filter settings.  Initially these settings are set at a medium level of protection.  Increase them to quarantine more messages.  You should review your quarantined message frequently after you have adjusted these settings.

Second,  you can configure a Message Rule in your email client to put e-mails that do not have your address in the To: field,  into your Deleted Items or Trash folder.    Most junk e-mail is not sent to you, but instead your address is in the BCC: field.  With this rule in place you should periodically check your Deleted Items or Trash folder for mail that you may have wanted.  People who subscribe to or receive email from mailings lists such as Yahoo-Groups should not implement this procedure.


How to I access my Postini Message Centre?

To view your quarantined messages go to http://login.postini.com.  Login with your username (your e-mail address without the @brucetelecom.com) and password.

What does pop lock busy mean?

Most commonly, you may receive this error if  you experience an interruption in your connection while you are checking your email, for instance if your dial-up connection is terminated abnormally.   It can also happen if you cancel receiving your mail and retry again too quickly or if someone has sent you a message that is too large for your computer to download.

When you begin to retrieve your mail from your mailbox on the server, the server locks the mailbox so that no one else may try to retrieve your mail during the POP operation.  It then sends you the mail, one message at a time.  If you receive all the email that was in your mailbox on the server, then the server deletes the copy of the messages it has and unlocks your mailbox.

If  you interrupt this process by cancelling the receive operation, the messages remain on the server, and the maibox will remain locked for 20 minutes.  Each time you try to retrieve the mail while the mailbox is locked will reset the 20 minute timer, because the server is trying to protect your mailbox from being tampered with.

Why do I keep getting the same couple of messages over and over again?

Sometimes your mail client may tell you that you have several messages waiting to be retrieved.  When you retrieve them however, you find that you have already received the first few, and you never seem get passed one.  For example you may have 6 messages waiting, and the first two appear your Inbox repeatedly but  you never seem to get the third one.

The problem is almost always that someone has sent you an email with a large attachment.  The server is trying to send you the message, but if your computer can't receive it or you cancel downloading messages then the server does not delete the messages you have already received. 
 Either wait longer while retrieving your mail, or visit our webmail page (http://webmail.bmts.com)  where you can examine the contents of your mailbox directly on the server.  There you can either delete the message with the large attachment, or you can attempt to download the attachment in your web browser.  This often works, where e-mail does not simply because the web protocol (HTTP) is better suited for sending large files than the email protocol (POP3).

I sent someone a message, why didn't my email get there right away?

Because there is nothing to say it must be delivered immediately.  The only guarantee that you have with e-mail is that the message will be delivered somewhere, or it will be returned to you.

Sometimes the Internet works so well , that we take for granted that it is simply a global network of computers, and things can go wrong with computers.  It can be frustrating when things do not work as expected.  Often our frustration is because our assumptions on how the process works are incorrect.

When you submit an email to our mail server for delivery, it immediately tries to contact the mail server of the recipient.  If  it can not contact the far end server, it could be that the far end server is not answering, or that there is an interruption in the Internet between the servers.  When something like this happens our mail server will queue your mail for delivery, and try again every four hours.  If not successful after four hours, the mail server will notify you of the temporary problem, and continue attempting delivery at four hour intervals for four days.  If your message cannot be delivered after four days it is returned to you.

Remember however that we discussed the spam/UCE problem earlier.   The mechanisms that ISP's put into place to help combat junk e-mail and viruses can introduce two wrinkles in the delivery process.  This first is quarantining.

It is possible that you sent an e-mail to someone but their ISP thought it was junk mail, and quarantined it.  Bruce Telecom employs the Postini filtering service.  If someone sent you an email, and you haven't received it, but it was not returned to them, you should login to your Postini message centre and look for the message there.

The other wrinkle to delivery is that filtering services can introduce a delay as your email is passed through the filter process.  Postini does not add any appreciable delay to email sent to you.  However, the antivirus functions of ClamAV which is used by Bruce Telecom can delay your mail inbound and outbound from thirty seconds to 5 minutes.  Note that depending where your mail is being delivered to, there can be the same delay on the other end.  During peak times, or virus oubreaks, services such as AOL.com or hotmail.com may delay your mail for processing by as much as several hours.

Why did my message get returned?

Sometimes when you send a message it cannot be delivered.   When this happens, the server will return the message to you with an explanation of the problem.  Here is a summary of typical errors:

    Example:
    550 5.1.1 <user@brucetelecom.com>... User unknown
    or
    553 5.3.0 <toerev8@independent.on.ca>... No such user at this domain

The address that this message was sent to is simply incorrect.  If you sent the message, please contact the recipient and ask them to spell their address again.
    Example:
    550 5.1.2 <user@somedomain.org>... Host unknown (Name server: somedomain.org: host not found)

Here the domain portion "somedomain.org" has been made up.  The domain does not exist, and so the mail can't be delivered.   This error occurs frequently when people misspell "Sympatico" as "Symaptico".

    Example:
    550 5.0.0 <full@brucetelecom.com>... Mail for ful rejected.Mailbox full is full.

You can not send any more mail to this user until they remove some mail from their mailbox on the server.  The amount mail a user is permitted to store varies from company to company.  At Bruce Telecom the limit is 25Mb.

    Example:
    ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
    <ayhvrdftv@bizzy.com>

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
    <ayhvrdftv@bizzy.com>... Deferred: Connection refused by mx.bizzy.com.
    Message could not be delivered for 5 days
    Message will be deleted from queue

In this example, the remote server has not accepted mail for 5 days.  It could be that this server does not accept mail or it could be having problems.  In either case our server has given up trying after 5 days.


Why am I get returned messages that I didn't send?

This confusing e-mail event can happen for three common reasons.

 First, a spammer may have sent out junk mail to a list of addresses that he or she bought.  When they sent out the spam, they used your email address in the From: field.  That way any addresses that are invalid bounce back to you and not the spammer.

Second, many computer viruses spread themselves via e-mail.  When they infect a computer, they search the entire harddrive for email addresses that may be stored there.  Then the virus picks several addresses and tries to send itself out with these addresses in the To: field.  If someone you know has your email address in their address book, and becomes infected with virus, you will likely see returned messages from the virus.

Third, and most unpleasant, you may be infected with a virus yourself.   If  the virus is on your computer mailing itself out to your contacts, you will definately see a large number of returned messages that you did not send. 

What does "work offline" mean?

In most e-mail client programs there is an option to "Work Offline".  You choose this mode when you want to work with the email you have already on your computer without dialing up or connecting.

How do I work offline?

Usually when you first open up your email client such as Outlook Express, if you are not connected to the Internet it will prompt you to either pick "Connect" or "Work Offline".  If you are already online you can disconnect yourself by double clicking the icon at the bottom right of your screen and pick "Disconnect".  Once you are disconnected, you can go back to your email client and pick File>Work Offline.


What can I do offline?

Tons!  There is very little in the email program that needs to be done online but actually sending and receiving.  In Outlook Express for example, you can read all your old emails, clean out ones you do not want anymore,  and write all new emails while offline.  This is especially useful if you are on dialup and wish to minimize the amount of time using the phone line.  Once you are done writing your email (s), you click send and it queues into the Outbox.  The next time you are online your email client will automatically send all the emails at once for you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce Telecom Email Policies.

This portion details the Bruce Telecom Email Policies.

When using your email with Bruce Telecom, there are a set or rules or guidelines that users should follow.  The policies and limits are enforced to help email flowing as quickly and easily as possible for all users on the system.  Information about privacy can be found here.

How big is my mailbox?

Please refer to the above section for mailbox limits.

What happens if I exceed the maximum limit for my mailbox?

When you exceed the maximum of  25Mb, your mailbox will automatically lock.  The first step to fix this is to clear the mailbox  to below the 15Mb soft limit explained above.  This can be done one of two ways.  Either by going to our Webmail site at http://webmail.bmts.com  and deleting the emails manually, or by calling our tech support at 1-866-517-2000 (368-2000 locally) with option 2, and we can clear everything in it at once.

The second step is to unlock the mailbox.  The system automatically locks/unlocks mailboxes at 8am every morning.  If you wish for it to be unlocked before then, you may call one of the numbers above and have it unlocked manually.

What happens if my email exceeds the maximum message size?

If it exceeds the maximum message size, it will "bounce back" to you being rejected due to size.  You can then zip the attachment with a compression program to make it smaller, or if sending multiple files, send the files a few at a time to make the emails smaller.

What about sending advertising information to potential customers?

i)  Customers are explicity prohibited from sending unsolicited bulk e-mail messages ("junk mail" or "spam"). Such material can only be sent to those who have explicitly requested it. If a recipient asks to stop receiving e-mail, the Customer must not send that person any further e-mail.

ii)  Customers may not forward or otherwise propagate chain letters, whether or not the recipient wishes to receive such e-mail.

iii)  Malicious e-mail, including but not limited to "e-mail bombing" (flooding a user or site with numerous large messages) is prohibited.

iv)  Forging e-mail headers information is prohibited.

Full information regarding the terms and conditions of using Bruce Telecom can be found here.

How many messages can I send in a day?

The maximum allowable messages you can send are 200 per hour, and 500 per day.  You may receive as many emails as you wish, just remember that many large emails will exceed the mailbox limit if you do not check it periodically to clear it.