Mail through your GMU account

MEMO email can be accessed both on the web and via IMAP/SMTP. ITU (GMU's information support team) maintains a web page for setting up MEMO mail with Netscape 7.1. Additionally IT&E has a web page with lots of helpful information.

Incoming Mail
Incoming mail is accessed through IMAP. The IMAP server is mail.gmu.edu You want to SSL Authentication (by password), using port 993. Your username is the same as your GMU (MEMO) account username.
Outgoing Mail
The SMTP server is smtp.gmu.edu You will need to use secure SMTP via SSL, with password authentication. You can use the standard port (25), or if your ISP is blocking access to that port, you can try port 587.
Automatic Address Filling
GMU maintains an LDAP server which many email programs can use to automatically fill in GMU addresses. The LDAP hostname is directory.gmu.edu, and the query string (often labelled "Base DN" or "Search Base") is o=gmu.edu If you don't know what this means, don't worry about implementing this feature, it's not a big deal. You may use SSL (port 636), with a subtree scope. You may need to use Simple authentication with your GMU username and password.
Web Interface
GMU's web interface is https://mail.gmu.edu
Spam Filtering
GMU has a (poor) spam filter which requires some tuning to work well. You login at http://antispam.gmu.edu. GMU is now exerimenting with replacing or enhancing this spam filter with a new one. This second filter can be accessed at https://ironport-antispam.gmu.edu/.

Mail through your CS account

Incoming Mail
Incoming mail is accessed using IMAP. The IMAP server is mail.cs.gmu.edu Note that this is a different server than in the GMU account instructions above. You want to SSL Authentication (by password), using port 993. Your username is the same as your CS account username. The IMAP path prefix is your user directory plus mail (for example, /cs-dstudent/foo/mail if you're a student with foo as a username).
Outgoing Mail
Use GMU's primary SMTP server for outgoing mail -- follow the outgoing mail instructions in the GMU account information above.
Automatic Address Filling
You can use the same procedure as described in the GMU account information above.
Adding a Certificate
The CS mail server does not have a certificate authority. On some mail clients (particularly on the Mac) you'll get a lot of complaining about this. You can get around this by downloading and installing this certificate file on your system. On the Mac, you do this by double-clicking on the file, and adding it to your keychain under "X509 Anchors" (important). You can then throw away the file.
Spam Filtering
In addition to GMU's spam filter (through which all mail goes -- see above), the CS department also runs SpamAssassin to tag mail with its opinion as to whether the mail is spam or not. SpamAssassin's scoring header looks like this:
X-CSD-MailScanner-SpamScore: ssssssssssssssssssssss
The number of S's indicate the degree to which SpamAssassin believes the mail is spam. This is useful for constructing client filter rules. For example, in Apple's Mail.app program, you can create a rule that says "If the header X-CSD-MailScanner contains ssssss as a substring, then treat the mail as spam". Then any mail message with 6 or more s's would be treated as spam here.