October

Our certificate is set to expire!

In order to establish secure connections, riseup.net must have a certificate. The current one we have for mail.riseup.net is set to expire on October 22nd. Rather than pay a corporation lots of money for certificates, we have decided to use the non-profit CA Cert (http://cacert.org).

What does this mean for you? If you want to continue using secure connections for any mail related communication, you must follow the directions we have listed at:

http://help.riseup.net/certificates

Not using secure connections? Want information about email security? Then check out:

http://help.riseup.net/security

AOL and lists.riseup.net

AOL is threatening to block us because we send more unwanted mail to AOL than AOL would like. It is still a very low amount (less than one percent), but it would really suck if we couldn’t deliver mail anymore to AOL.

So, we are now keeping statistics on which lists receive complaints from AOL users. If your list receives a high number of such complaints, we may put your list on probation or send a reminder notice to all subscribers.

The last thing we want to do is spend our time being list cops, so it would just be better for everyone if all you list admins out there could please, please, please exercise caution when adding subscribers to your list.

IE and mail.riseup.net

We have noticed a recent upsurge in the number of people who are having trouble getting Internet Explorer (IE) to work with Squirrelmail, one of the web based mail interfaces which are available at http://mail.riseup.net.

We do not know what is going on. Most people using IE are still able to use squirrelmail fine. If you are having this problem, there are two immediate things you can do:

(1) Use IMP instead (the other web mail interface).

(2) Stop using IE. Instead, download firefox at http://mozilla.org. Internet Explorer is made by an evil corporation bent on world domination and is full of security holes. Firefox is a free, easy, secure community created browser that actually works with riseup.net.

If you are the sleuthing type, we would love it if you wanted to uncover the mysteries of why IE sometimes refuses to work. Even with cookies and javascript enabled, some people still report that IE just one day stopped working.

The hard & soft pitches

OK, here is the soft pitch: we work hard to provide you with the services we do, however flawed they might be, and we rely solely on small individual donations from people like you to keep the servers running. It would be really swell if you donated today.

And here is the hard pitch: get off your butt and donate now! If we are going to change anything in this world, we all need to get very serious about supporting counter-systemic alternatives and withdrawing from the systems which are killing us and the planet. Donating is not optional–it is necessary for your own survival.

As always, please disregard this pitch if you are unemployed, broke, or live in the Global South.

If either the soft or hard pitch appealed to you, and for instructions on how you can donate, please visit: http://help.riseup.net/donate