Office365 & BT

BT Internet have recently started "upgrading" all their business customers to Office365. This causes various problems for many business users.

Problems

1) No choice

The first problem is that there was no choice to business users whether they upgraded or not. If BT had said "We have this fantastic new service you can use at no charge, do you want it?", then all would be well, but instead they said "You are moving to Office365 whether you like it or not".

2) No Notice

Secondly, most users did not know about it until after the fact. We have had many support calls about it, with people simply confused about why they weren't receiving mail any more, or people who had only worked out what was happening after they'd contacted BT to find out where their mail was

3) No Information

Thirdly, BT did try to tell users after it had happened, by disabling their normal mail servers, and setting up a dummy POP3 server which just delivered one message, saying that their mail had been moved.

Unfortunately, this dummy POP3 server was not standards compliant, which meant that much client software could not understand what it was doing... It delivered a message without the mandatory blank line between the header and message body, also it did not use the mandatory line ending of CR/LF, meaning that a client which was waiting for the terminating CR/LF "." CR/LF sequence, would be waiting for ever. (The fact that this dummy server got through BT's testing is rather worrying, but that's a different story)

4) Removed Functionality

Fourthly, for many users, it is actually a downgrade not an upgrade. Catch-all mailboxes are no longer supported, neither are normal aliases, SMTP relay from any address at a domain is no longer supported, etc. This means that it is suitable for people with one or two users who will individually use the Outlook Web-Access facility, or have individual POP3 accounts at BT with their email client set up to access that directly. However, it is no longer suitable for people who have their own local mail server.

5) Enhanced Requirements

Office365 requires SSL or TLS encryption on the connections. While this is widely supported nowadays, it is by no means universally supported by all client software. This is especially the case if you are using older client software, which may mean that you need to purchase an upgrade to that software, or even replace it with something totally different, with the expense and time that will take.

Now what?

So, if BT have 'upgraded' your account and you're having problems, what can you do now?

1) Change ISP

Obviously, one choice would be to say good-bye to BT Internet altogether. While this may seem a bit drastic, it is a choice which some of our customers have taken, not just because of the reduced usefulness, but because of the way it was handled. If you do decide to do this, look around carefully when choosing a new ISP. A lot of the more famous ISPs are more suitable for home users than for businesses.

2) Start Using Office365 standalone

If you only have a couple of users, and have very low email requirements (eg no central administration, no lists, no archiving etc) then you may want to start using Office365 as Microsoft intended it, and set up your email clients to collect mail directly from the Office365 servers. Just be aware that if you have previously been used to having your own local mail server, such as our VPOP3 email server, then you will probably start missing functionality soon enough.

3) Use Office365 with your mail server

You could create multiple Office365 accounts, one for each of your users or aliases, and then in your mail server, set up multiple POP3 'collectors' to collect  the mail from each of those Office365 accounts and distribute it to the relevant local user. If you have more than a few users, this will become very tedious and error-prone, and maintaining it (adding/removing users etc) will become time consuming.

4) Switch POP3 provider

You could switch to another POP3 catch-all account. Most business users using POP3 mailboxes before will have their own domain name, whose mail would previously have been directed to a catch-all account at BT. You should be able to easily redirect that mail to another POP3 catch-all mailbox with another provider. If you have your domain registered with another company, they may be able to provide you with a POP3 mailbox free of charge, or you could get a POP3 mailbox from someone else (e.g. we can provide POP3 mailboxes to users of VPOP3 to get around this problem - contact us for information)

5) Switch to SMTP feed

You could take the stop of switching to an incoming SMTP feed. This is theoretically the best solution, as it is the way Internet mail was intended to work. The mail will then bypass BT (and Office365) totally. To get this to work, you need a permanent Internet connection with a static IP address. Set up a host name on your domain to point to your static IP address, set up the MX record on your domain to point to that host name, and make sure your router/firewall is allowing incoming TCP connections on port 25 and directing them to your internal mail server.

If you are using our VPOP3 email server and need help with any of this, then you can contact us at http://support.pscs.co.uk, or if you are not using our VPOP3 email server, and want to start using an easy-to-use local mail server, you can contact us or see our website for more information.

VPOP3 Antivirus

For many years now we have been selling "avast! for VPOP3" as our low cost antivirus software for scanning emails as they pass through VPOP3. At the end of 2012, Avast are stopping supporting their version 4 virus scanning engine, which VPOP3 uses. This means that the "avast! for VPOP3" solution will stop updating after the end of 2012.

We have spent the year so far trying to find an alternative, including re-licensing a more recent version of the avast! virus scanning engine, or looking for alternative providers. Unfortunately, we have been unable to do so at a suitable price point. We already have the Sophos SAV Interface and MailScan for VPOP3 solutions for higher prices than "avast! for VPOP3", so we have not felt it would be beneficial to offer another antivirus solution at similar prices to those.

We will continue looking for an alternative low cost antivirus engine we could use, but for now we have decided to use the popular open-source ClamAV antivirus engine and create a plugin for VPOP3 to access this. This has allowed us to have a replacement for avast! for VPOP3 from the end of 2012.

The VPOP3 Antivirus offering is even cheaper than "avast! for VPOP3" was, so hopefully more people will take advantage of this fact to add an extra layer of virus scanning to their networks.

Note that we have always recommended having a desktop virus scanner on each user's PC as the first priority, then an email gateway virus scanner adds an extra layer of protection. The email gateway virus scanner should never be the only protection, since there are other ways for viruses to enter the network.

To use the VPOP3 Antivirus solution you will need VPOP3 v5.0g or later, or VPOP3 v4.0g. These versions have fixes to the antivirus plugin API in VPOP3 which allow it to work properly.

I have tried to answer a few questions people may have below.

Why isn't the VPOP3 Antivirus free, since ClamAV is?

ClamAV is open source, but we have had to write a plugin to interface between VPOP3 and ClamAV to make it work with minimal effort. This plugin, and the support for it, is what you are paying for.

ClamAV is licenced under the GPL - does this mean we can get the source code to VPOP3 now, since the GPL is 'viral'?

No. VPOP3 does not link into the ClamAV licences at all. The VPOP3 AV plugin launches a slightly modified version of 'clamd' (the 'ClamAV Daemon') and then communicates with that using a documented TCP/IP protocol. This means that VPOP3 and ClamAV are separate programs, so the GPL does not 'cross' that divide. We can send you the source code for the slightly modified version of clamd if you wish, but it probably won't be that useful (the only difference is a slight change to the file data being scanned to try to avoid conflicts with other antivirus programs running on the VPOP3 computer)

Can I try to make VPOP3 talk to ClamAV myself, and do it for free?

You are free to do this, but we can't support you doing this under our free support. If you want to write your own plugin DLL, we can send you the antivirus plugin API documentation.

Why can't we use our existing desktop virus scanner?

Most desktop antivirus programs are licensed for use by one person, so using them to scan mail on a mail server may be breaching the license conditions.

Also, it can be quite tricky linking a virus scanner to VPOP3, so it would probably not be as easy as you may think...

Why don't you support XYZ virus scanner?

We have to arrange licensing terms with the virus scanner publishers, and get details of their API (if they have one). This can be quite a lengthy process. 

Also, the licensing terms for mail server virus scanning usually involve licensing the software for the number of users being protected (not for the 'one PC' which it is running on). This can make it quite expensive to buy the run-time licenses for the customers. Usually this means that it is no cheaper than the MailScan or Sophos SAV Interface virus scanners we already support. 

It can cost thousands of pounds to produce the virus scanner integration for a new virus scanner engine (including the ClamAV one), so we need to be reasonably confident we will be able to recover that cost. If there is no 'USP' of the new scanner, it is unlikely we'd be able to do this.

I want you to support XYZ virus scanner, I've already got a licence for it on my PC, so it won't cost me a lot

See the previous two answers

I've currently got avast! for VPOP3 which is coming up for renewal soon, what happens now?

When we send out the renewal notice, we will give you the prices for the VPOP3 Antivirus, MailScan for VPOP3 and Sophos SAV Interface.

If you choose to go with the VPOP3 Antivirus, you will need to make sure you have VPOP3 4.0f or VPOP3 5.0g or later, and then download and install the software, then, in VPOP3, go to Settings -> Antivirus, and change the antivirus engine to 'VPOP3 Antivirus', and that's it

I've already renewed avast! for VPOP3 this year, what happens?

Earlier in the year, we were hoping to be able to continue with avast! for VPOP3 after this year, so we took renewals as normal. Unfortunately this wasn't possible, so we have been left with the situation where some people have purchased a licence for something we cannot provide.

So, we have three options, which we hope will be acceptable to everyone.

1. We can convert the "avast! for VPOP3" subscription, into a "VPOP3 Antivirus" subscription. The length of this will be adjusted to take into account the different costs of these subscriptions
2. We can convert the "avast! for VPOP3" subscription, into a "VPOP3 Antivirus" subscription of the same length, and refund the extra amount which was paid.
3. We can refund the remainder of the avast! for VPOP3" subscription from the end of 2012

For all of these, we will assume that the 'changeover' time is at the end of 2012, because you can continue to use avast! for VPOP3 up until then.

I only have a licence for VPOP3 1.x, 2.x or 3.x, what can I do?

The VPOP3 Antivirus software needs version 4.x or later, so will not work with these early versions. 

If you have one of the earlier versions, then, obviously, you could upgrade to the current version, or you could use the MailScan for VPOP3 or Sophos SAV Interface software instead, which will work with all versions of VPOP3.