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About this page

This page is intended to answer Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about e-mail.

What is e-mail?

E-Mail is the common abbreviation for Electronic Mail. Letters can be transmitted electronically, from one computer, anywhere in the world to another computer, anywhere else in the world, via the Internet.

What is a mail host?

An e-mail host is the address to which your entire incoming e-mail is directed, and where it is held until you download it to your hard drive.

Where is my e-mail kept?

All incoming e-mail is held in the files of the server, or mail host, until the recipient asks to download it to his/her hard drive. Once downloaded, it is stored in whatever folder you have designated for incoming mail - the "INBOX" in most e-mail programs.

How can I send a picture, document and/or file to someone else by e-mail?

Be certain before sending an attachment with your e-mail that the recipient has the ability to receive and open the type of file you wish to send, whether it is a graphic (such as .gif or .jpg), sound (such as .mp3 or .wav) or a word processing or text file. The procedure for most e-mail programs is very similar, although variations may occur within the same application, depending on the platform once uses (PC or MAC).

Below is the procedure for the three most widely used programs, Yahoo, Netscape Mail, and Internet Mail (Internet Explorer). If you have another e-mail program, check the manual or instructions which came with it for help, or call customer support.

With a new message open, you will find the "Message" pull-down menu now offers a choice named either: "Attach," "Attach File," "Attach Document" or "Enclosure." When clicked on, this will open a dialog box for locating on your hard drive the file or picture which you wish to transmit. Highlight the file or picture and click on "Open" or "Add," if indicated, and "Done" to close the dialog box.

What is spam e-mail?

Spam Mail or Spam refers to unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) and unsolicited bulk mail (UBE) Example includes unsolicited advertisements. The term spammers refers to the senders of the spam.

How can spammers get my e-mail address?

Spammers can collect email addresses in many ways. For example:

• By search engines. They can use some search engines to collect e-mail address from web pages, newsgroups, bulletin boards, Yellow pages ... etc. automatically.
• By guessing. They can generate a random sequence of characters, hoping to match a few valid addresses.
• By purchasing. They can buy e-mail addresses from other spammers.
• People may be required to submit their mail addresses on the Internet (ie., before downloading software/programs) and these e-mail addresses may be released to unknown persons.
• People may leave their e-mail addresses in some dubious questionnaire that are found on the Internet, on the street or on telephone.

What can I do when I receive a spam e-mail?

• WE DO NOT ASK FOR PASSWORDS TO BE SENT VIA E-MAIL! Do not ever send anybody your SJSU password via e-mail.
• NEVER buy/use any products/services from spammers.
• Do not open any files attached with the spam e-mail. These attachments may contain a computer virus or indecent materials.
• Do not click on any links or pictures in the spam e-mail . This includes the "Click Here to Unsubscribe" and "Remove me" links, because spammers may use these links to verify that your e-mail address is valid. Or, these links could lead to Web pages that are able to infect computers with a computer virus.
• Do not reply to spam e-mail, because:
  • Very often the sender and return addresses of the spam e-mail are fake.
  • The spammers will know that your e-mail address is valid and active if they receive any e-mail from you.
  • Once a spammer know they have a valid e-mail address, your e-mail address may be sold to other spammers.
• Do not forward any spam e-mail to your friends and acquaintances.

You can DO the following:

• You can set up mail filters/rules in your e-mail clients to remove the spam e-mails automatically.
• You can also report the spam e-mail by calling SJSU Help Desk at (408) 924-2377 or go to our ticket portal and submit an incident ticket into our ticketing system. The University Help Desk will facilitate any corrective action.

I am finding it difficult to stay within my e-mail quota. What do you suggest?

This can be challenging as we are all very dependent on Email. Some helpful techniques include:

• If you are still using the old legacy UNIX e-mail system switch to the current SJSU e-mail system, it holds about ten times as much e-mail.
• Practice regular deletion of unnecessary e-mail.
• Practice regular deletion of unnecessary e-mail in the "SENT" folder
• Practice regular deletion of retained copies of messages you have sent.
• Unsubscribing from mailing lists that are not useful to you.

When looking for e-mail to delete to bring you within quota, look especially at messages that include attachments. A few dozen of these can account for a very substantial portion of your quota if the attachments are particularly large. (Graphics or animated messages from friends can be very wasteful of your storage quota.)

How do I check my email.sjsu.edu e-mail online?

Using a Web browser, go to web-mail.sjsu.edu and check it online.

How do I check my sjsu.edu e-mail online?

Using a Web browser, go to webmail.sjsu.edu and check it online.

I am having a problem setting up sjsu e-mail on my computer. It receives e-mail but will not send any.

Off-campus , try to use the ISP off of your internet provider (ie. SBCglobal, Yahoo!, AOL). This may be blocked by your ISP, but t is worth a try. If this does not work you and you may have to use Webmail. On-campus , make sure that the outgoing server is correct. It must be smtp.sjsu.edu on the wired network.

Need more information?

If you did not find what you are looking for on this site the SJSU Help Desk can help you.

Missing Links, Errors and Broken Links?

We try to keep this and every page in our Website up to date. If you know of a resource we are not listing, find an error and/or a broken link we apologize. Please let us know about the error so we can fix it. It would be most helpful if you could copy the URL of the page with the missing resource, error or broken link, and provide information about where the error or the broken link is in the page. Please do one of the following:

• Call us at (408) 924-2377 during our normal business hours.
• Or, go to our ticket portal and submit an incident ticket into our ticketing system.
• Or, visit us in Clark Hall room 102 during our normal business hours.