Webform Recommendations

As spam becomes more and more of a problem, spammers and scammers are utilizing web page contact forms more and more to launch their spam and campaigns. We have been forced to implement strict policies when it comes to websites and their ability to send out emails. Our official recommendation is not to use contact forms in the first place. We recommend placing your contact email as a non-clickable link (no mailto:) on the page so people can copy/paste it into their email client.

However, if a form is necessary for your site functionality needs, there are some things to know. First, it is much easier to receive these notifications if we also handle email for your domain. If you use another provider for email, such as Microsoft 365 or Google, getting those emails to you is more of a challenge. If your email is hosted with us, you can use the instructions found on this page: https://www.netsolinc.com/web-form-authentication/

If your email is with another provider, you’ll need to do some work with your admin console to setup the proper authentication so that the website can use your email provider to send the email. There are some good plugins for WordPress to do this and other website content management systems (CMS) also have the ability to varying degrees. We recommend FluentSMTP for WordPress as it handles all the major providers including Microsoft 365 for free. Most of the other plugins require a subscription to handle Microsoft 365.

Keep in mind that the sending email address (the FROM) and the authenticating email address must match. This is important if you use an email such as info@yourdomain.com and it is a list instead of a mailbox. If this is the case, you’ll have to change the FROM or you’ll need to make the info@ an actual mailbox so that it can send email.

Our tech support team is available to help you with setup, so please reach out to us at support@internetpro.net if you run into trouble.

tnolen2024-03-13T16:09:47-05:00March 13, 2024|Documentation, FAQ|Comments Off

New Remote Email Forward Policy

February 6, 2024 – Beginning today, we will be ending the ability to do “remote forwards” on email accounts. A remote forward is setup to take an email address which is local to our servers and forward it to another service. For example, if we forwarded support@internetpro.net (which is located on our servers) to someone@yahoo.com, that would be a “remote forward”. The problem with this is that when Yahoo! sees the email, they think it is being sent by our servers. So, if a spammer sends an email to support@internetpro.net and we forward it to Yahoo!, then Yahoo! thinks we are spamming them.

This month, Google has put much more strict policies in place dealing with spam and as a result, emails coming through our systems are being rejected or flagged as spam by Google’s servers. This is due to the number of remote forwards we have in place, and so we’ve had to make the decision to stop these forwards and institute a policy of not allowing them in the future.

Since Google has implemented this, the rest of the industry who haven’t already done so will quickly line up to do so as well.

Some more information about remote forwards follows for the technically curious:

Why remote forwards are bad

With the anti-spam protections in place in all modern mail servers, forwarding emails to remote servers or addresses is not recommended. The whole industry is moving away from remote forwards. As Best Practices for email server operators, remote forwarding should be disabled due to the potentially system-wide negative effects they could cause, such as backscatter and IP reputation issues.

Backscatter can stem from the remote addresses being no longer valid, servers not being authorized to send emails for the sender’s domain, or emails being rejected by remote servers due to anti-spam policies in place at the remote site.

As more backscatter events accumulate, they will not only cause higher system load and resource usage, but will also have a negative effect on the IP reputation of the sending servers. A poor IP reputation will cause system-wide delivery issues affecting accounts on those servers. For example, if our server’s IPs are blocked or rate-limited by Yahoo! or Gmail servers, all accounts will experience delivery issues when sending emails to Yahoo! and Gmail addresses. (This is happening now. See: https://www.netsolinc.com/gmail-blocking-email/)

Aside from the backscatter and IP reputation issues, having remote forwarding available provides a way for bad actors secretly forwarding a compromised account’s emails to a remote address without the account/mailbox owner’s knowledge. For example, if third-party site’s account verification or password-reset emails are being forwarded to a remote address, the bad actor could gain access to the compromised user’s other online accounts.

tnolen2024-02-06T17:30:54-06:00February 6, 2024|Documentation, FAQ, News and Updates|Comments Off

Insecure PHP Notice

May 2021 – WordPress has a “Site Health” feature which makes recommendations about your host and site’s setup. Recently, many users have been asking about a notice that they have seen in the dashboard starting that the server is running an insecure version of PHP and it should be upgraded. This article addresses that notice.

The wording on those warnings is unfortunate. The servers displaying that are running Ubuntu 18.04 which is an LTS release (Long Term Support). The way Debian-based releases work (Ubuntu is Debian-based) is that they keep the versioning the same so as to guarantee compatibility throughout the life of the release, but they do patch the security issues. So, it is not actually an insecure release, but does behave has 7.2 PHP. Most websites are currently on “shared servers” which are ones that house many sites. We run LTS releases because moving from PHP version to version frequently breaks *a lot*. The newest sites being turned up have gone on 20.04 servers (and PHP 7.4 release), but there are currently issues with 7.4. For instance, email for forms, etc. does not support encryption like SSL or STARTTLS. We’re trying to get all of the bugs worked out of 7.4 before moving all of the servers up to the newest release and the usual schedule for doing that is in the 4th year of support – which in this case would be around April of 2022.

If you have any questions regarding this or if your site has a specific requirement for a PHP version greater than 7.2, please contact us at support@internetpro.net.

tnolen2021-05-19T06:59:37-05:00May 19, 2021|FAQ|Comments Off

Email Scam

October 4, 2018 – There is a relatively new scam going around on email which we have been receiving a lot of call/emails about. We thought it prudent to address this type of scam here on our site. The scams are a type of blackmail and they are happening because of the many data breaches of different companies you may have heard about in the news (for example, Target, Equifax, Yahoo!, and others). The other contributing factor is that many people use the same password information across a lot of sites. The scammers will send an email where for “proof” that they have hacked into your system, they give you an example password. This is a password garnered from one of the aforementioned data breaches. They then try to blackmail you into sending money so that they don’t destroy your system or publish embarrassing information about you.

Here is a common example:
–BEGIN

Hello! I’m a member of an international hacker group.

As you could probably have guessed, your account <your email addres> was hacked, because I sent message you from it.

Now I have access to you accounts! For example, your password for <your email address> is <password you may have used>

Within a period from July 7, 2018 to September 23, 2018, you were infected by the virus we’ve created, through an adult website you’ve visited. So far, we have access to your messages, social media accounts, and messengers. Moreover, we’ve gotten full damps of these data

. We are aware of your little and big secrets…yeah, you do have them. We saw and recorded your doings on porn websites. Your tastes are so weird, you know..

But the key thing is that sometimes we recorded you with your webcam, syncing the recordings with what you watched! I think you are not interested show this video to your friends, relatives, and your intimate one…

Transfer $800 to our Bitcoin wallet: 1HWnuWz77oXgb4LVBfB9fQAAgLqJJS7m7T If you don’t know about Bitcoin please input in Google “buy BTC”. It’s really easy.

I guarantee that after that, we’ll erase all your “data” 🙂

A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours to pay the above-mentioned amount.

Your data will be erased once the money are transferred.
If they are not, all your messages and videos recorded will be automatically sent to all your contacts found on your devices at the moment of infection.

You should always think about your security.
We hope this case will teach you to keep secrets.
Take care of yourself.

–END

Understand that these are scams. The data from the data breaches has been published and is available on the web. This is a relatively easy way for scammers to extract money from you without have to have any real technical knowledge. It is just a trick, but it DOES highlight the importance of not reusing passwords.

We hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns regarding a scam like this. Contact us at 256-547-6817 or support@internetpro.net.

tnolen2018-10-18T14:30:40-05:00October 4, 2018|FAQ, News and Updates|Comments Off

Email Forgery FAQ

This article aims to answer some questions we frequently receive regarding spam emails which seem to come from yourself or a user you know.

Q: How does someone make it look like he/she sent an email to themselves or make it so that it looks like it comes from someone I know?
A: The email system was designed in the beginning to behave exactly like the postal mail system. Postal mail was very familiar and reliable, so it seemed reasonable from a programmer’s point of view to create a system which behaved in the same way. As such, there is no “sender verification”. This means that there are no controls in place to verify the sender is who he says he is. With postal mail, you can send a letter with a fake return address and name on the envelope and you can do exactly the same thing in email. All you have to do is go into your email program and change the Name and Email Address fields in your settings before you send the email. Spammers and scammers frequently use this to help trick someone to opening an attachment and/or reading the email because people are more likely to read an email from someone they know.

Q: How would I know which email address it really came from?
A: You don’t. The email system does not require sender authentication, so there is no way to tell who an email really comes from. Sometimes the headers (envelope) of the email can be used to track a sender based on the IP address it came from, but this process usually requires a court order and it still may not track the email to an individual user. For instance, if an email is sent from a restaurant which offers free wireless internet, the court order may determine that the email came from the restaurant itself, but would not be able to determine the individual patron.

Q: How do we know what to blacklist so we do not get more email from this offender in the future?
A: You don’t. Because changing the sender is so trivial, the scammer/spammer can easily change the From address on subsequent messages to get around your blacklist. Spam is a very difficult issue and this is one of the reasons why. You cannot rely on filtering systems to make your email 100% safe – you must be diligent in your inspection of emails. Do not open an attachment that you are not sure is legitimate. For example, if someone you “know” sends you an attachment you aren’t expecting, contact them and make sure they actually sent it before opening it.

tnolen2018-03-07T22:58:46-06:00May 18, 2016|FAQ|Comments Off

Web Form Authentication (Updated)

Why won’t the form on my website send email?

Beginning January 1, 2015, Network Solutions, Inc. requires SMTP authentication for all form on websites. This it to prevent spammers from exploiting web forms (like contact forms, applications, and such) to send out unsolicited email. By using SMTP authentication, we are able to limit the number of emails a form can generate, and if one becomes exploited, we are able to stop just that form and not block an entire web server.

Most (if not all) modern email libraries support SMTP authentication. For example, in WordPress, we recommend the “FluentSMTP” plugin. Other Content Management Systems will have similar plugins and even standalone form handlers should support this protocol. If you are a web designer and are having trouble finding a suitable library for delivering email, please contact us at support@internetpro.net.

If we host your email, we recommend using the email account which will be receiving the webform information. The FROM on your forms MUST be the same as the email address you use for authentication. If we do not host your email, please take a look at this article.

If you want your form to send email out as webform@yourdomain.com, then create an alias with that address on the account who will be monitoring the email.

Settings for the email library:

Use SMTP-Auth
Authentication type: Plain or Login
Security: TLS
SMTP server: smtp.internetpro.net
Port: 587
Username: entire email address (in our example, webform@yourdomain.com)
Password: Your configured password (minimum 5 characters with 1 number and 1 letter)

Update February 26, 2024 – The Username used for authentication *MUST* match the FROM EMAIL address now. This is because of new policies by other providers to help prevent spam. Please update your email authentication plugins. Our staff will be updating sites we have access to.

tnolen2024-03-19T11:04:36-05:00December 17, 2014|Documentation, FAQ|Comments Off

Mapping NetSol Cloud on Windows 7 or 8

Frequently, people want to access their cloud storage through a mapped drive letter just like they might do a server drive on a local network. This tutorial will help guide you on mapping a drive letter in Windows 7 and 8 (also 8.1).

There are some limitations with the WebDAV support in Windows, so it is a bit of a chore to make this work. Once it does, however, you should be set for good. If you have trouble, please contact us at support@internetpro.net so our technicians can give you help.

1.) Download and install the Microsoft update KB90730 – Web Folders: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=15123

2.) Modify the Windows registry, this will enable Windows to accept basic authentication for SSL and non-SSL shares.

We have provided a registry key HERE which will do this automatically for you. (Just download and run that key) Or, you can do it manually following these instructions (skip to step 3 if you use our automatic key)

2a) Start > Search > Type: regedit > Select regedit

2b) The registry key of interest to find is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters

2c) Select BasicAuthLevel (if it does not exist, create the key)

2d) Change the value to 2. Select OK > File > Exit

3) Reboot Windows

4) Map the WebDav folder as a network drive (Note: This procedure sometimes does not work. If it fails, proceed to step 5)

4a) Using Windows Explorer Select Computer > Select Map Network Drive.

4b) Choose the drive letter you would like to map

4c) In the Folder blank, use https://cloud.internetpro.net/netsol/remote.php/webdav

4d) Place a check mark next to “Reconnect at logon” and “Connect using different credentials” and hit Finish. If it maps, you should be good to go and you can stop here.

5) If step 4 did not work, follow these instructions to create a batch file to map the drive for you.

5a) Download the batch file HERE. Save the file.

5b) Edit the batch file by right clicking the file and choosing Edit.

5c) Change “N:” to whatever drive letter you want to use. Replace “username” with your NetSol Cloud username and “password” with your NetSol Cloud password

5d) Save and exit the file.

5e) To test the file, double click on it. The drive letter should map correctly. Click on Start > Computer to verify a mapped drive is present.

5f) Now, right click the file and choose Cut.

5g) Click Start > All Programs.

5h) Right Click on Startup and choose Open (not Open All Users)

5i) A new window will open. Right click inside that window and choose Paste. The netsolcloud.bat file should be placed in that window.

6) Reboot windows and confirm that your mapped drive is still present.

NOTE: We have seen cases where antivirus and/or antispyware software prevents batch files from running on startup. If this is the case, you may have to contact your antivirus vendor to find out how to add an exception. Alternatively, you can leave the netsolcloud.bat file on your desktop and click it manually when logging in to reconnect your mapped drive to NetSol Cloud.

tnolen2014-01-03T18:45:38-06:00January 3, 2014|Documentation, FAQ, NetSol Cloud|Comments Off

IMAP issues in Outlook 2013 and Office 365

It has come to our attention that many Outlook 2013 and Office 365 users are having issues within synchronizing IMAP folders recently. This appears to be happening across all hosts due to a recent update that Microsoft has pushed out to all of its users.

What causes the issue?

This issue is caused by installing one of the following updates that have been pushed out by Microsoft on 11/12/13:

KB2837618 or KB2837643

If you have not already done so, please avoid this update for a bit until Microsoft corrects the issue. If you cannot avoid the update, we will provide you with further steps regarding a temporary fix for the issue.

What does this issue affect?

This issue with Microsoft Outlook 2013 and Office 365 will cause IMAP folders to not successfully synchronize, therefore inhibit your ability to receive new mail to your inbox. Restarting Outlook temporarily fixes the issue.

How do I fix this issue?

There are a few ways to resolve the issue:

Option 1) Uninstall the recent updates (KB2837618 or KB2837643)

One option is to remove the recent update that has been pushed out by Microsoft to Outlook 2013 and Office 365 users. To do so, complete the following steps:

Open your Start menu and click visit your Control Panel.
Click Programs and Features
Click View Installed Updates
Locate either the KB2837618 or KB2837643 updates and remove them.

Option 2) Disable the “Show only subscribed folders” option in Outlook

There have been reports that the problem can also be resolved by removing the setting that states to show only subscribed folders in Outlook. To do so, complete the following steps:

Under the “Folder” tab, right of the “Favorites” tab, click “IMAP Folders”
Outlook should open a dialog box with IMAP folders.
There is a checkbox that says, “When displaying hierarchy in Outlook, show only the subscribed folders.” Uncheck that box.
Force sending/receiving within Outlook and everything should synchronize up properly.

Option 3) Changing the root folder path

Visit your Account Settings, then Advanced for the mail account that you are having trouble with. This can be located at one of the following:

Go to Change Account>More Settings>Advanced Tab
File>Account Settings>Account settings>Change…>More Settings…>Advanced
In the Folders option, look for “Root folder path” and enter “Inbox”.
Save your settings and force a Send/Receive

tnolen2013-11-25T17:30:46-06:00November 25, 2013|Documentation, FAQ, News and Updates|Comments Off

Desktop Client Sync Documentation for NetSol Cloud

This documentation will show you how to install and use the desktop sync software for NetSol Cloud. There are versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac. This document will focus on Windows, but use of the program is the same on all platforms. Installation will vary somewhat, but the sync software will install just like any other software package on your platform of choice.

1) First, download the client sync software.
2) Run the installer. Hit Next twice to take the defaults and then hit Install. Hit Next again and then Finish.
3) The client will automatically run. You may get a popup warning about no connection being configured yet. Just hit OK to clear that message.
4) The client software runs in the systray next to the clock in Windows. You will see a little cloud icon. Click it once to get the initial connection creation screen.
5) In the blank, enter your cloud URL (This is https://cloud.internetpro.net/netsol for users of the NetSol Cloud personal. For Business or Enterprise users, the address will be different).
6) Hit Next and on the next screen, enter your username and password. These are the same user/pass you use to log into the NetSol Cloud web interface. Do not put a check in the box.
7) Hit Next and you will get some messages related to the setup of the client.
8 ) Hit Finish.

At this point, the software is installed. The wizard will disappear, but the client icon will still be visible in the systray. By default, the client creates a folder called ownCloud in your user profile and it creates a clientsync folder on your cloud. The ownCloud and clientsync folders are set up to syncronize.

If you would like to add other folders to sync, simply click the cloud icon in the systray. A new window will appear. Hit the “Add Sync…” button.
Choose the folder you would like to sync and give it a descriptive name (alias).
Hit Next. Make sure you have a dot next to the first choice (to your ownCloud) and fill in the blank for the folder. This name will be the folder name on your cloud. It can be the same as the folder name on your computer, but it does not have to be.
Hit Finish, and you will be taken to a screen which will show you the status of the sync. You can close the window at this time and the files will sync in the background.

NOTE: The sync software does a complete synchronization. If you delete a file from a synced folder, the file will be removed from the cloud and from any other computers which are also syncing that folder.

tnolen2012-06-12T17:52:06-05:00June 12, 2012|Documentation, FAQ, NetSol Cloud|Comments Off

Issues Mapping Windows Drive to NetSol Cloud

How to fix Slow WebDAV Performance in Windows: (should work for all versions)

In Internet Explorer, open the Tools menu, then click Internet Options.
Select the Connections tab.
Click the LAN Settings button.
Uncheck the “Automatically detect settings” box.

Unfortunately, Windows’ support for WebDAV is a little strange and may not always function correctly. We therefore recommend using one of the following WebDAV clients for Windows:

NetDrive is free for home users.
WebDrive is a robust product, but a bit pricey.
Cyberduck works on Windows and Mac and provides synchronization on demand. Very nice.
Total Commander together with the WebDAV plugin provides a FTP like interface to a WebDAV server.
BitKinex also provides an FTP like interface and integrates with Windows Explorer for drag and drop and is Freeware.

In addition to the above tools, the Microsoft Office products have built in WebDAV support. As an example, Microsoft Word can directly open and edit remote documents by using a WebDAV server.
This is also supported by LibreOffice.

Mapping a Windows Drive to a WebDAV Server

This tutorial shows you how to connect a Folder or a Windows Drive Letter to any WebDAV server, what to do if the command fails, what not to do, and security. This tutorial is for Windows XP/Vista/W7 client users.

The Two WebDAV Windows Clients

Microsoft Windows provides two WebDAV clients: Web Folders and WebDAV Mini Redirector. The clients are integrated and come preinstalled with your Windows.

Web Folders (XP only)

The first generation WebDAV client provided by Microsoft is called Web Folders and allows one to drag and drop between a remote WebDAV server and your local computer. The Web Folders client provides functionality similar to (secure) FTP.

How to connect (XP only):

Go to My Network Places, and click on Add Network Place at the top of the left sidebar.
The window that pops up is the Add Network Place Wizard. Click Next.
On the next page, enter the URL of the WebDAV folder in the box named Internet or network address and click Next.
A window asking for your username and password will pop up at this point. Enter your username and password, and click OK.
On the next page, enter a name for this share — this is the name that will show up in the My Network Places listing.
Click Finish on the next page.

WebDAV Mini Redirector (XP, Vista, and Win7)

This tutorial gives you a few tips when it comes to using the Windows WebDAV clients with any server.

The second generation Microsoft WebDAV client is called WebDAV Mini Redirector and allows one to map a WebDAV location to a Drive letter the same way as if you were using a Windows File Sharing/SMB/CIFS share.

WebDAV Mini Redirector limitations:

No support for secure connections (HTTPS) on Windows XP. There is support on Windows 7, but it does not always work. It is inconsistent.
Your WebDAV server must be using port 80, the default port.
Typically fails when transfering larger files.
Gets confused if the user does not have access to read and/or write to a file or directory.

How to connect:

Right click on My Computer and select Map Network Drive.
In the Folder “entry field”, enter the URL, and click Finish.
Enter your username and password in the authentication box that appears.

Be sure to enter the correct username and password. WebDAV Mini Redirector may not take no for an answer and may continue attempting to login until the hacker prevention logic in BarracudaDrive bans your client’s IP address. You will get an obscure error message in the console. You can see if you are banned by attempting to login using a browser.

You can use the network drive like you use your C:\ hard drive as soon as the command completes successfully. This means that you can directly work with documents without first copying them, start computer programs, and more over the Internet.

The following image shows a Windows Explorer window listing the content of a WebDAV server.

Windows WebDAV Mini Redirector Authentication Bug:

Many Windows computers have a bug in the digest authentication process and thus authenticating using the above procedure will fail. You have the bug in your computer if the “Windows credentials dialogue” reappears after you have entered the correct username and password. It is possible to circumvent this bug by mapping the drive from the command line. Note, if the “Windows credentials dialogue” reappears, you must reboot your Windows computer before using the command line. Windows will continue to fail if you do not reboot. This is also true if you accidently enter the wrong credentials.

Do the following to map a drive and authenticate from the command line:

Open a command window (DOS Window) by clicking the Windows start button and typing in the command “cmd” in the “run” or “search programs …” box.
Type the following command in the command window: (This will map to the N: drive)
NET USE N: \\cloud.internetpro.net\netsol\remote.php\webdav /USER:yourusername yourpassword /persistent:no

What to do if the command fails

Error messages such as “The network name cannot be found” can be related to a number of problems. The first thing to do is to check if your Windows WebDAV client is disabled.

You can enable the client manually:

Start the WebClient Service

Go to:
Control Panel -> Performance And Maintanance -> Administrative Tools -> Services
Scroll down until you see WebClient.

Set WebClient to automatic and start the service. Try to connect from a command window and restart Windows if it fails.

Things get a bit complicated if you have the same problem after enabling the WebClient service and after rebooting Windows. You may have to upgrade your WebDAV Mini Redirector Windows client.

You can do a search on Google and you will find many articles related to the WebDAV Mini Redirector problems. You can also see Wikipedia: WebDAV and Microsoft Windows.

Upgrading Windows Vista WebDAV client:Microsoft has ackowledged there are Web Folder issues in Vista, but unless your system is 64-bit, you should be able to get Web Folders working by installing an update from Microsoft and using the instructions and “workarounds” in the following steps:

If you have a 32-bit Vista apply this Software Update for Web Folders (Microsoft.com).

After Rebooting

With Windows 7, the drive will not stay mapped. This behavior is by design and more information about it can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2673544. To work around this issue, create a BAT file using an editor like Notepad. In that BAT file, just enter a command line like the NET USE statement above. We recommend starting the BAT file with “@echo off” (no quotes) so that your password is hidden when the window pops up. Place this BAT file in your Startup folder. It will run each time your start your computer and will remap the drive. If you need help creating a BAT file, please contact us at support@internetpro.net.

tnolen2014-01-03T17:55:09-06:00June 11, 2012|Documentation, FAQ, NetSol Cloud|Comments Off