When travelling without access to a computer configured for access to Sociology systems, you will want to check your email. The time-honored way of handling this situation has been to open a telnet session to angst and read mail using UNIX Pine. With the removal of telnet you can no longer access angst without a secure shell program, which is often not available when travelling. Discussed here is another option that takes advantage of the web browser facility now found on almost every Internet-connected PC.
Through a properly configured web portal, it is possible to web access mail servers with the same level of security and privacy as is provided by secure shell connections. Arts and Sciences Computing and the Duke University Linux Users Group (DULUG) have developed such systems that are now available to acpub users and Duke departments with their own mail servers. The Sociology mail server is configured as one of the allowed access points. Use of this system is convenient and simple. The mail client is not as full-featured, but it gives you the basic facility to read and send mail. You do not have access to folders or addressbooks that you maintain through your regular email client.
The first time you access each system from any PC you will need to go through the process of accepting a "certificate". A digital certificate is roughly analogous to a driver's license that you might be asked to present when writing a check. It identifies the system you are accessing. The certificate is presented each time you access the webmail system. The first time you access the system, you are led through a process of accepting and storing the certificate. Each subsequent time you access webmail, the same certificate is quietly presented and compared against the stored copy to verify that you are accessing the correct system. Since the certificate is stored on the PC, you may have to go through a process of acceptance the first time you use one of these systems on a different PC.
Secure Webmail may be accessed from either of two sites:
Certificate acceptance entails the following steps:
The above figure illustrates the key portion of the Secure Webmail login screen.
Your mailbox will open in the subsequent screen using the IMP email client. Note that the login screen has a "New User Introduction" link that provides some basic instruction in use of this rather intuitive client. You will have access to your folders but not addressbooks.
Webmail services are maintained by other organizations. Sociology can offer no guarantees as to availability of this service from either site, although the Arts and Sciences site is your recommended first choice because it has greater institutional support. Because webmail depends on third party support, it is advisable that you not make this your primary email client. Please use webmail only when other options are unavailable.
