• Checking for new email

By default, ChoiceMail connects to the internet every 10 minutes to see if new emails are available. Depending on your connection speed and your needs, you may choose to change this connection rate. Note that you always have ChoiceMail check for new mail immediately by right-clicking its system tray icon and selecting “Check for new emails now”. The maximum delay can be 9999 minutes. You can also disable automatic checking completely.


• Approving new senders to whom you are sending an email

Normally your email application is configured such that your outgoing mail messages are processed through ChoiceMail. This is done so that when you send an email to someone with whom you have not previously corresponded, that sender can be preapproved so that when they reply to your message, they do not have to register. We recommend that you leave this option enabled. You can also automatically approve people on your CC list and/or on your BCC list.


• Automatically Approving Senders Who Respond to a Challenge

Normally, when a sender responds to a registration request or challenge, ChoiceMail One sends you a popup alert and, optionally, an audio alert.

You can set a preference to have ChoiceMail One automatically accept any sender who registers and add that sender’s email address to your white list.



• Change private message code

When a group of people correspond and there’s a CC list, it’s sometimes the case that you will end up sending a message to yourself. Normally this is not a problem. Unfortunately, you may run into a situation where a spammer tries to get a junk mail through to you by making it look like that message is coming from your own email address. To guard against this situation, ChoiceMail adds an extra header to all outgoing email messages that are sent to yourself. The value of the header is a string code. When an incoming email from ”yourself” is received, ChoiceMail will check that header and only accept that message if the string code in that header is known to ChoiceMail. In the extremely unlikely event that a spammer manages to find out that code, you can easily change it to a new random string. (See also “My aliases” below)


• Dealing with bounced registration requests

Since most spammers use bogus email addresses, there is a strong possibility that the automatic registration request sent out by ChoiceMail will simply be bounced back along with an error message. In general, you don’t want to see those messages. In most cases, ChoiceMail can recognize that an incoming email is in fact a bounced registration request and delete it silently. We recommend that you leave this option checked.

Sometimes the server at the other end returns the bounced message in a changed format such that it’s no longer recognizable to ChoiceMail as a registration request. In such cases, you often get back a message from a server whose email address is something like postmaster@somedomain.com or admin@somedomain.com. In these situations, ChoiceMail will simply send a registration message right back to them and the bounced message will simply sit in your “New senders” list until it’s automatically deleted. If you are reviewing your “New senders” list from time to time and you see a message from “postmaster” (say) at a domain to where you recently (typically within 10 minutes) sent a message, you may want to look at the message because it’s most likely telling you that you mistyped the name of the recipient so that it’s not known at the other end.

To accept an individual message, click the menu item Views | Message information to see individual email messages associated with the sender. Then right-click on the message and pick "Allow selected message". This will allow that message only to be passed through to your email system while still leaving the sender on the new senders list.


• Always accept mail system messages

Although you don’t want to see bounced registration messages (which are really just mail system messages), you will probably want to see other system messages. For example, if you send an email to someone and mistype their email address, the message will be bounced back and you need to know about it. Leave this option checked.


• Automatically delete unregistered senders after X days

Mail from new senders is held up until the sender submits a registration. The senders themselves are listed in the “New senders” view so you can review them if you wish to manually add senders to your Preapproved list. Assuming that legitimate senders will register or be preapproved by you, this list will essentially contain only junk mail senders. Check this box to cause new senders to be deleted automatically after some time period. Once a sender is deleted, any held up mail from that sender is also deleted. (Note that this does not apply to individual mail messages from that sender that you have already quietly accepted since those messages will have already passed through to your email application). Note that once a sender is deleted, they will again receive a new registration request if they send you another email message.


• Limit the number of emails from unknown senders

It’s possible that a spammer will send you lots of messages, trying to fill up your mail box. You can configure ChoiceMail so that it silently (i.e. without telling the sender) stops accepting emails from a particular sender after a certain number of messages have been received. Note that even though those emails have been received by ChoiceMail, they are still not visible to your email application so you still don’t have to worry about them.

You can also tell ChoiceMail to automatically reject a sender if that sender has sent more than a certain number of messages without a registration request.


• Delete unverified senders from self

By default, ChoiceMail attempts to verify that an incoming email message coming from your own email address was in fact sent by you. ChoiceMail can only verify the authenticity of such messages if those messages were in fact sent out by your email application through ChoiceMail in the first place. If it cannot verify that the message was sent by you, it deletes it.

Under normal circumstances you should leave this setting enabled.


• Automatically test SMTP server when switching

Whenever you select a different SMTP server, ChoiceMail will try to verify that it is usable and warn you if it cannot be used with your current connection. This test can take a few seconds. If you know for sure which SMTP servers are usable, you can disable this test.


• Never send registration requests to unknown senders

ChoiceMail normally sends out a request to unknown senders, asking them to register for permission to reach you. If you prefer to review all incoming senders beforehand, you can switch off this functionality. You can then examine unknown senders manually, approve the ones you recognize, and then turn on registration again so that ChoiceMail can send out requests to the remaining unknown senders. This feature is so important that an icon is available on the main ChoiceMail window so that you are aware as to whether registration messages are being sent out.


• Place email messages in the junk box when deleted

As of version 1.5, ChoiceMail One maintains a junk box where messages 'deleted' by ChoiceMail One are temporarily stored. This gets messages out of your way but still lets you review them if you so desire. Uncheck if you wish to bypass the junkbox and have deleted mail disappear immediately.


• Delete messages from the junk box after N days

You can control how many days deleted mail stays in the junk box before it is permanently deleted. Typically 2 or 3 days is sufficient. It is highly recommended that you leave this option enabled.


• Show balloon hints

This option controls whether a popup hint is displayed when you move the mouse over some items. Once you get used to using ChoiceMail One, you may wish to disable these hints if they are in your way.


• Periodically check for new updates

ChoiceMail One can automatically check our servers periodically to see if a new update is available. If you would prefer that this check not be performed, you can disable this option.

General settings
POP3 account configuration
Aliases
Messages customization
Away responder customization