We will offer you a number of usernames when you register, but you are free to choose any one you like, so long as someone else hasn't registered it already.
Why do I need a username?
We need you to choose a username for two reasons: firstly we have password protected this site so that you can control who sees what about you, and so that you can securely control the destination of any e-mail sent to your dunelm e-mail address.
Secondly because in future we will use your dunelm e-mail address for sending mail to you from the University, and on the various mailing lists, including Newswire, should you wish to subscribe to them. This means that if you change the e-mail address provider, you only have to make one change here, and all mail from the University, and all mail address to your username@dunelm.org.uk address will be delivered to your new e-mail address.
What to check if you can not register
The first thing to check is that you are entering the right ID number. In general this will begin with two digits representing the year you arrived in Durham.
The next thing to check is that you are entering your date of birth correctly.
If you are logging in at the same computer that you share with another dunelm user then it may help to click "logoff" and make sure that you have closed your Web browser and restarted it before trying to log in.
If you already have a dunelm address, see the separate question relating to existing users.
It is possible that we do not have your date of birth correctly on our database. If that is the case then the registration will not work, and we will need to correct it. You will need to e-mail us at help@dunelm.org.uk. Please tell us your full name, including maiden name where applicable, your date of birth and the ID you were trying to use to log in.
I'm fed up and want to contact someone.
Sorry about that. Please read the other questions in this section, and if you still can't make it work, email help@dunelm.org.uk. Please tell us your full name, including maiden name where applicable, your date of birth and the ID you were trying to use to log in.and we will do our best to solve the problem.
Simply enter your username in the log-in box, with no password, and we will e-mail the password to your current dunelm forwarding address. If your e-mail address has changed and you can not access the address to which your password will be sent, then follow the procedure for a lost username below.
I log in, but then I am prompted to do it again, and again
We use a "cookie file" to tell your computer and ours that you are logged on.
Your browser must be configured to accept cookies for this web site to work. If your browser is not accepting
cookies, then you will log on successfully, but as soon as you try to do something else, our computer will think that you are not logged on, and prompt you to do so again.
If you want help to set up your browser, then click here.
Some people don't like cookie files on principal, since usually you don't know that they are being put onto your computer. We have been "up front" about them instead so you know what's going on.
When you log in you are asked if you want the computer to remember you for next time. If you click that check box then the cookie that is set will "persist": in other words it will stay on your computer.
If you do not click the check box above the cookie file will be removed at the end of the session.
I have forgotten my username
We e-mailed you details of your username when you first registered. You might want to look through stored e-mail to see if you still have it. If not you'll need a 9 digit ID number which we print on the fly-sheet each time we send Durham First. If you don't have this number, then please use this form to request your 9 digit ID. Once you have this number, go through the registration procedure again, and you will be given a secure page on which your username and password will appear.
It works like this: you register a username on this site, say Jane.Smith, You now have a new e-mail address which is Jane.Smith@dunelm.org.uk
In the registration process you tell us the e-mail address you have with your Internet Service Provider (ISP), say JaneSmith@bstinternet.com or janesmith@hotmail.com
Any mail sent to your dunelm address will be forwarded by us to your ISP account. That way if you ask your friends to e-mail your dunelm address, and you decide to change your ISP, you don't need to tell your friends that your e-mail address has changed.
Is the service an Internet Service Provider
No, you still need your own Internet Service (ISP).
The service gives you an e-mail address which can be forwarded to any ISP e-mail address you may have, or to a Web Mail service.
We do not store your e-mail on our server at all.
How do I configure my mailer to use the new address?
You need to edit the "From" and "Reply To" addresses in your account settings menu. You should put your dunelm address in them. Once you have done this any e-mail you send will appear to come from your dunelm address.
Some web mail providers do not always allow you to do this, but any mail client like Outlook, Eudora, etc will allow you to select whichever "from" and "reply-to" address you choose.
Should I change my dial up settings?
Absolutely not!
The dunelm service does not change the way you connect to your Internet Service Provider at all.
Do I still need an Internet Service Provider?
Yes you do. This is a forwarding service, not a "connecting" one.
Can I make replies to my Hotmail go to my Dunelm address?
Yes. Go to your hotmail account, find a tab called called Options. Click this. Under "Additional Options" there is a section called "Reply Related Settings". In there, change your reply-to address to your dunelm one.
How do set up Outlook Express?
In Outlook Express 4, 5 or 6 go into Tools, Accounts. Choose the mailing account you usually use. In the "From" and "Reply-to" field put in your dunelm address.
I think my Dunelm mail is not working
There's an easy test. Send an e-mail to your dunelm address. If you receive it after a few minutes, then it's working. If not there's something wrong, or you are forwarding to Hotmail and using their junk rules. See next question, or a little further down for how to deal with Hotmail.
I have sent myself a test mail and it bounced back.
In this case there is something wrong with either your dunelm address or the address it is forwarding to. If the error message says the name is not available @dunelm.org.uk then you are using the wrong dunelm address or it has not been activated yet. Generally we activate by 7.15 am the morning following your registration. If you get a different error message go to the next question.
My test mail bounced from a non dunelm address
You need to check that you told us the correct e-mail address to which to send the mail. It may be obvious from the return message what is wrong. Go to the e-mail part of your account, if you have not already done so, and check that the forwarding address really is the correct one to which your dunelm mail should be forwarded. If it's not correct then update it, and by 7.15 the next morning all should be OK again!
Mail to my Hotmail Account ends up in my Junk Mail folder
It would appear that Hotmail's attempts to filter junk mail are a little basic. If you switch their junk mail filter on it detects that the person sent your mail to you@dunelm.org.uk, but that it was delivered to you@hotmail.com and Hotmail thinks that this means it's junk mail. To get around this problem you need to do the following:
Log on to Hotmail and click "Options"
Then choose the option Junk E-Mail Protection
Then click "Mailing Lists"
In the "Type a Single E-Mail Address" box, enter your dunelm addres in full ( ie you@dunelm.org.uk) and then click "Add"
Click OK
We know this sounds odd, but it will work, and should enable all your dunelm mail to arrive successfully in your inbox.
The reason it works is because hotmail detects that the mail it receives was addressed to your dunelm account, but delivered to the hotmail account, and therefore thinks it's junk mail.
My webmail provider seems to delete my mail. How do I stop this happening?
Some webmail and other email providers check that the mail you are sent has the same "to" address in it as the email address under which you own that account.
Lets suppose you have the email address drwho@dunelm.org.uk and you have that delivered to tardis@yahoo.com. Yahoo might detect (correctly) that email being delivered to the tardis@yahoo.com account had not been addressed to that account, and supposing it was spam, dump the mail into your spam folder, or delete it altogether.
You need to stop this from happening, and at this link you can find detailed instructions for a number of webmail and internet service providers about how to do this.
We take this issue very seriously. All access to this site is password protected, and logged.
Who can see this information?
That depends on you.
When you register you are asked if you wish to make your information publicly available. If you unchecked the box, then although you can use the site, no-one can find you. If you check the box then other people will be able to find you, and see your name, year college and degree in Durham, and any further information you may post.
If additionally, you leave the "address details" checked, then people will be able to view your postcode and / or country.
How do I stop people seeing my details?
Simply go to my details and uncheck the relevant box.
You will continue to be able to use the site, but no-one will be able to see your information.
Why does the e-mail directory have to be password protected?
The following is the text of a message I sent to a couple of people who asked why the site had to be moved behind a password protected area.
The reason we have put this behind password protection is that amongst other things we are offering a permanent e-mail service allied to the site. The reason for this was threeold:
We were finding that so many people want to use the service, particularly new leavers, that we were overwhelmed and had to make the registration process "self-service."
Secondly there are now a number of different maillists, news services, and other places where someone's e-mail address might end up. Then we would find that the person would ask us to change their e-mail address, but had forgotten which list they were on; so we would trawl through 40 different lists to find the right one; or they would forget (or not tell us) which e-mail address they had used to subscribe in the first place! The solution for us is to give all registrants a "dunelm.org.uk" e-mail address, and then to get the person to update the real e-mail address to which the dunelm one forwards. That way we have a constant "dunelm" e-mail address in use within the University, and the alumnus / alumna has one self-service point to update the forwarding address.
Finally, having the e-mail addresses open to the world would allow someone wanted to "harvest" addresses for use in spam mail easy access to do so. The password protection will stop automated e-mail search programmes from stealing the data.
All this leads on, then, to having to put the update of forwarding address part, and any other control of personal data like which lists people are subscribed to, behind a password protected area, since you would not want a third party to maliciously (or mistakenly) change your forwarding address.
If there is a demand we could add an extra box which would allow users to permit non-registered people (ie the whole Internet world) to view the data...
Please use one or more fields to perform your search.
Please only enter a surname in the name field, not first names.
If you enter data in more than one field it will limit your search to people who satisfy all criteria.
Not everyone has elected to let others see their Postcode or Country. This means that someone may
be "findable" via a College or a Name search for example, but not via a Postcode or Country search.
For searching on Years, please enter a four digit year (eg 1981) in both the From and To fields. The search will be performed on alumni
who were in Durham between these two dates. Thus if you put 1981 to 1984 in the From and To fields, you will
return people who left or arrived anytime between 1981 and 1984. So you will encompass, say, both those who were here from 1979 to 1982 and
those who were here from 1983 to 1986.
Couldn't find the person you were looking for?
If you couldn't find the person you were looking for, this could be because
there is no-one with that name on our database, or
no-one with that name has yet registered, or
someone has registered, but elected to keep their details private.
To find the person you could post a message on the Friends Finder
section of the Bulletin Board to see if anyone else knows
their whereabouts, or have a look at our page on the main alumni web site
on finding your friends.
This is the method used by many web sites to ensure an encrypted connection is established between your browser and our server. That way no one can read your data over the net without breaking the encryption, which is hard!
Tell me more about this security certificate business
We have more details, including a full explanation here
As a result of a significant increase in spam mail, our IT Service are implementing more rigorous e-mail SPAM tagging. Previously, we have been tagging messaged received from sites which have been 'black-listed' for some reason (e.g. having systems which were open to hackers).
We have now implemented a system used in many other Universities, which looks at content and 'scores' the message according to various criteria. .
We have now modified the criteria so that there are not so many false-positives (i.e. mail being tagged which is not spam). However, this is not an exact science and there will always be some false positives and there will always be mail which you might consider to be spam which is not tagged. We are trying to find a reasonable balance.
Once mail is tagged you can filter it in your mailer into a separate folder for inspection and disposal
I got junk e-mail (spam). Why?
There are two likely ways the spammer got your e-mail address. One is that you posted to a guestbook or newsgroup, or that your address appears on a web page or some other public medium on the Internet. This is by far the most common source of information for the spammers who collect e-mail addresses of the Internet and then either use them or sell them on cheap CDs.
In 2001 about 30% of all e-mail was spam; in 2002 it was up to 45% or so.
You should NEVER post your dunelm e-mail address in a public forum like a newsgroup, since you will almost definitely be spammed within days. If you need your e-mail address on a public web site then you will likely get spammed too if your site is listed by one of the search engines, or is linked to by other sites.
To see whether you are on a public site somewhere, just go to Google, pop your dunelm e-mail address in and see what happens. If you get a result containing your e-mail than that's where the spammers got it. And try Google groups too .
The other method that the spammers use is name generators at domains. In other words, latch onto dunelm.org.uk and send to every combination of first and last name on that domain. So A.AArdvark@dunelm.org.uk, then Andrew.Aardvark@dunelm.org.uk etc etc.
Can't you block spam senders?
I'm afraid we can't, for two reasons. Firstly we have taken a policy decision in the University that we won't block mail, unless it is infected with a virus. Instead where it is spam, or likely to be spam, we prepend the subject line with {SPAM?} enabling you easily to filter the message into a junk folder, or the bin.
Secondly, the spammers often impersonate a real or imaginary person, so it is highly likely that the e-mail address from which you apparently received a spam mail is either false, or someone's legitimate e-mail.
How can I use "message rules" to filter out the junk mail
Please see our separate page which gives details of how to do this for a number of common e-mail programmes. You can find this link at www.dunelm.org.uk/help/messagerules.php3
