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Setting up your Freecycle.org mailbox

Using your Freecycle.org email address helps identify you and helps differentiate you from other mods. The Freecycle.org email address tells the GOAs and other teams that you have official business on more than one group; if you were using a personal email address on more than one group that would be against the guidelines of only modding one group. Use this address only on Freecycle.org business, not for any other purposes. Continue to use your personal email address on your local group, FIOD, leadership groups, etc.

Webmail is here http://webmail.freecycle.org.

All team members are expected to reply to emails within 48 hours (holidays and weekends excluded). If you are unable to meet that deadline, please let your Team Leader or Coordinator know so that someone can cover the mailbox if you need to be gone for an extended period.

Please do not delete emails from your Freecycle.org mailbox. Exception: routine FAQ-type queries from members for which a followup response is not necessary.

Password

You may be given a specific password to use. If you change your password, you will need to provide your new password to your Team Leader. Your email account may be monitored, and someone may need to access your account when you are unavailable.

Password requirements:

  • Passwords must be at least 12 characters in length and contain at least one capital letter, one lower case letter, one number and one symbol.
  • Do not use same password on other Freecycle.org mailboxes.
  • Do not use the same password that you use for your personal email.

Helpful links:

Tips

  • If you have multiple mailboxes to keep track of, a password manager can be very helpful. Google "best password manager" for reviews of current products. Many are free.
  • Password changes must be made on Webmail first, then on your email client.

Signature block

You have a number of options you can choose in setting up your account. It's only the first section for your signature block that must include your title and our trademarked name.

Here is an example you can use if you wish. Please use the current year in your signature block.

Your name, Freecycle.org title
Copyright (c) 2021, The Freecycle Network. All rights reserved. The Freecycle.org logo is a registered trademark of The Freecycle Network in the United States and/or other countries. 

Notice: The information contained in this message and any attachments is privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. Any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.

Note: Please do not add any other responsibilities to your sig line.

Folders

Please set up folders at the root level rather than as subsets of the inbox.

 

Email Do's and Don'ts

 

Webmail

Webmail is here: http://webmail.freecycle.org/ RoundCube is the primary webmail provider for The Freecycle.org Network(R).  Click here for more information on using RoundCube.

Email Clients

If you decide to use Thunderbird, Outlook or another mail client, please remember that tech support is not available. If you are already proficient at using such a program for your other email accounts, it is a simple matter to add your Freecycle.org account. Once your account has been created, there are a variety of methods available to access it. Detailed instructions for some common clients can be found below.

If you change your password, you must change it in webmail before changing it in your email client.

Thunderbird

  • For a guide on how to configure Thunderbird, please click Here

Microsoft Outlook

  • For a guide on how to configure your email account in Microsoft Outlook 2013 or 2016, please click here.

Server settings

Please note: Freecycle.org does NOT support POP3.

Inbound (IMAP) Server Settings

Setting Value
Protocol IMAP
Host mail.freecycle.org
Port 993
Security SSL/TLS
Authentication Required Normal password
Login youremailaddress@freecycle.org
Password yourpassword

Outbound Server (SMTP) Settings

Setting Value
Protocol SMTP
Host mail.freecycle.org
Port 465 or 587
Security SSL/TLS with port 465, STARTTLS with 587
Authentication Required Normal password
Login youremailaddress@freecycle.org
Password yourpassword

Mail Server backups

Our mailserver is backed up each night, and backups are retained for 30 days. However, be careful with deleting messages and especially folders, because restoring backups is an involved and time-consuming procedure for Freecycle's already-overstretched IT team.

If you find your box is getting too slow, this is usually because you have too many emails in your inbox. There is NO limit to emails you can have in folders, but there is limited space for our inboxes. Not only does it slow things down for you, but it will slow down all other mailboxes since we all share the same space.

Problem solving

  1. Make sure the account is set up correctly
  2. Experiment with ports
  3. Google your error message for possible solutions
  4. Try using different devices and different ISPs (i.e. workplace, public WiFi or mobile device)
  5. Discuss it with your team members to see if they have any suggestions
  6. For consistent SMTP issues with one particular ISP, try changing your outgoing server settings. For example, with Comcast, try using smtp.comcast.net for outgoing mail server rather than mail.freecycle.org.
  7. Freecycle.org mail servers will block your IP address for an hour after too many unsuccessful login attempts. Keep this in mind if you are having problems logging in.

Thunderbird setup

The first time you run it, it will try to walk through an automatic "transfer settings" procedure. When this happens (i.e. when it asks about importing settings from other programs, press Cancel.

  • Pull down the "Tools" menu and choose "Account Settings".
  • Click the Add Account... button at the lower left.
  • Choose "Email account" from the list.
  • Click Next.
  • For "Account Name", enter your full email address, ending with "@freecycle.org"
  • For "Your Name", enter your name as you want it to appear on your outgoing email messages.
  • For "Email Address", enter your full email address, ending with "@freecycle.org".
  • Click Next.

Server settings

Update April 2023 -- these server settings seem to work.

  • Incoming server | IMAP | Port 993| SSL/TLS
  • Outgoing server | SMTP | Port 587| STARTTLS

Follow the prompts and configure as follows:

Option Setting
Server type IMAP
Incoming Server mail.freecycle.org
Outgoing Server mail.freecycle.org
Incoming User Name youraccountname@freecycle.org
Account Name This is just a description for this account. It shows up in the folder viewer on the left side of the main window, as the name of the folder which contains everything relating to this email account. You can use whatever you like, it never gets sent to the server or anything. The only requirement is that if you configure Thunderbird to access multiple accounts, no other accounts can have the same name.

Click Finish. We will need to it did not ask about the security-related settings, so we will still need to go back into the new account's settings and fix a few things.

Incoming mail settings

  • Find the new account in the panel on the left (above the Add Account... button.) Below the new account, click Server Settings. You should see the right side of the window change to the Server Settings information.
  • Under Security Settings, click the SSL/TLS selection.
  • There are other settings on this panel which you may wish to set, in particular the Check for new messages every X minutes option.
  • Find the new account in the panel on the left (above the "Add Account..." button.) Below the new account, click "Composition & Addressing". You should see the right side of the window change to the "Composition & Addressing" information.
  • Under "Composition", when choosing between HTML and Plain Text, please keep in mind that emails sent as plain text may be less likely to be blocked as spam by the recipient's email service provider. However, plain text emails are limited in formatting options.

Outgoing Mail settings

  • The last item in the panel on the left is "Outgoing Server (SMTP)". Click this. You should see the right side of the window change to the "Outgoing Server (SMTP) Settings" information.
  • If the list on the right has more than one item, click on the item corresponding to the new account.
  • Click the Edit... button on the right.
  • Click the STARTTLS option at the bottom of the window, and change the Port number to 587.
  • Make sure the Use name and password checkbox is turned ON. If not, turn it on.
  • The User Name field should already contain your full email address, ending with @freecycle.org. If not, enter it.
  • You may wish to fill in the "Description" field at the top of this box, as I did here. It's not really necessary, it just makes the list of SMTP accounts look a little bit more orderly.
  • Click the OK button.
  • At this point, all of the necessary settings should be correct. You should be able to hit the OK button at the bottom of the window and return to Thunderbird's main screen.

Downloading Mail

  • When you get back to the main screen, in the panel on the left side of the window you should see the new account you just created, along with the Local Folders item.
  • If you turned on the Check for new messages every X minutes option, Thunderbird will start checking your mailbox every few minutes (whatever you set it to.) If not, you can click the Get Mail button at the top of the screen to make Thunderbird check your incoming mail now.
  • The first time you check the mail, you will be asked for the password. You should enter it.
  • You will also see the "Use Password Manager to remember this password" checkbox. Thunderbird's password manager is like a repository of stored passwords for different mailboxes. If you choose to use it, you will need to set a "master password" which protects all of the others, and enter that master password every time you run Thunderbird. Otherwise, you'll have to enter the mailbox password every time you run Thunderbird.
  • Personally, I have five different mailboxes, so it makes sense for me to enter just the one master password instead of entering the passwords for all five mailboxes individually.

Mailbox Folders

  • After Thunderbird has checked the mail in your mailbox for the first time, it will show you any folders which may exist on the server. The webmail interface automatically creates folders called Drafts, Sent, and Trash on the server. You can also create your own folders for storing messages- the one restriction is that they must be created as children of the Inbox folder, rather than siblings of the Inbox folder.
  • You can create folders as children of the "Inbox" folder in the new account. Those folders are physically stored on the mail server, which means they will be accessible through any other IMAP client, including the webmail interface. The contents of these folders will also be backed up on a regular basis.
  • You can also create folders as children of the Local Folders item. However, those folders are physically stored on your hard drive and will not be accessible from any computer other than the machine where you're running Thunderbird. Freecycle is unable to back up the contents of your local machine, so doing this may result in your stored items not being backed up anywhere, which means that if something happens to your desktop computer, anything in those folders will be gone.

Signature block

  1. Open Accounts > View settings for this account
  2. Set up your signature text. Remember to change the copyright date every year.

Junk settings

  1. Click on account name on left side.
  2. On the right side under Accounts, click "View settings for this account"
  3. Then on the left side click "Junk Settings" under your account name. None of the boxes need to be checked, but make sure that "Trust junk mail headers set by..." is NOT checked.
  4. At this point it's easy to repeat step 3 for all your accounts, because your settings are visible for all your accounts.

Changing your password

  1. You must change your email password in webmail before changing it in Thunderbird or any other email client.
  2. Click the TB Menu button (3 horizontal bars)
  3. Click Options > Security
  4. Click Saved Passwords
  5. Click Show Passwords
  6. Right-click the imap (incoming mail) account you want to change, click Edit Password and enter the new password
  7. Repeat previous step with smtp account (outgoing mail)
  8. Close options and restart TB.

Note: after a certain number of bad login attempts by Thunderbird or another email client, your IP address will get temporarily banned and the mail server will appear to be unreachable by your device. It will stay that way for one hour. If it’s urgent and you can’t wait an hour, the tech team can reset it manually.