Common Email Questions
Can I change my username?
You can't really change your username easily, so please be careful when picking yours when you fill out the new member application. If there is some valid reason that you need to have your username changed, email us requesting the change with your stated reasons why you need it done. This may require setting up a new account and transfering files - so we recommend that you backup any info from your old account before you make the request.
I applied for a resist.ca account over two weeks ago and never heard back. How do I find out the status of my application?
If your application was accepted (about 90% of all apps are accepted), you should have received confirmation with your login and password at the email address you provided in your application.
If your application was rejected (in most cases this is because of an empty application or you didn't provide any evidence that you are connected to any sort of _resist_ance) we will send you a letter outlining why the account was rejected.
If you haven't heard back in two weeks about your account, it is probably because the email address and phone numbers you left us does not work. In this case, you can contact us for more information.
What shouldn't I use my account for?
Resist.ca facilities should not be used either directly or indirectly:
- to transmit material counter to basis of unity, material that is invasive of another´s privacy, or material that disparages or insults any individual or group, based on race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, or other immutable characteristic;
- to transmit or cause to be transmitted any advertising, promotional or other materials that are unsolicited (commonly known as "spam");
- to engage in commercial or for-profit activity;
- to transmit or cause to be transmitted mail bombs, chain letters, chain petitions or pyramid schemes
Hotmail and Yahoo are free. Why should I pay for a resist.ca account?
- The financial contribution that you give for a resist.ca account is nominal (we suggest a minimum donation of $20 per year, but what you pay is up to you), so resist.ca is about as close to free as you can get.
- When you get right down to it, activists with anti-corporate analysis are essentially promoting (through use) corporate services like Hotmail and Yahoo each time they send an email. Instead of giving further advertising to large corporations, we encourage people to turn to small services run by grassroots organizations (whether they be uber-radical or not) as a way of promoting alternative communciations infrastructure and community-run services.
- There is a good chance your corporate email provider is pro-actively feeding information about you to the state. Even if you have "nothing to hide", our hope is that you would rather keep your email on a server where the administrators have established a trust relationship with their users and would not to divulge information about you to the authorities without a fight.
- Services such as Yahoo and Hotmail censor email by rewriting objectional words or blocking content all together - Resist.ca will never do that.
- Resist! allows you to check your email without navigating annoying banner ads and pop-up screens!
How do I reduce the amount of spam in my resist.ca account?
We are now using Realtime Blackhole Lists (RBL's) and greylisting system-wide. This means that every message that comes to the server, is checked by a few trusted sources to see if it matches any known spam and has to be coming from a properly configured mailserver before it is allowed to be delivered to your resist.ca email account. This will not eliminate all spam but we trust it will make a significant dent in the problem.
On top of that, there are other things you can do:
Once you've logged into your webmail account at https://mail.resist.ca, click on the Options link and go to "Bayes Spam - Intelligent Spam Filtering". Set your preferences accordingly.
For those of you who have your own computers and an internet connection, we recommend that you use Mozilla Thunderbird to read your mail. It comes with built-in spam filters that are easy to use. You can find out more about using spam filters (junk control) with Mozilla here. If you are using an older computer, try using Thunderbird which is a light version of Mozilla.
OSX users can also use OSXMail which has similar functionality built-in.
Most important never give your email address to an untrusted service!
Webmail (SquirrelMail) times out (says I am no longer logged in) after 30 minutes but I haven't finished writing my message. What can I do?
Webmail (SquirrelMail) has its limitations. Timeouts are necessary to make it more difficult for others to gain access to your email etc. There are a few things you can do to avoid the timeouts.
- By far the best thing you can do is to not use webmail. If you have your own computer, see this Q&A for other ways to read and send email. Webmail is slower, a bigger drain of our resources and is just crappy in general. Avoid it when possible.
- Compose your email in a text editor and when you are done, copy and paste it into your email. A hack at best.
- Click on buttons (such as the "Addresses" button just above the message body window) periodically to let the server know you are still around.
- Save a draft of your message periodically. The problem with this option is that your message may be truncated which is a problem since you are likely getting the timeout because the message is so long.
