Back in May last year, you may remember that we advised everyone on our service news to update their email client/device settings to use your full (primary) email address instead of your username, ready for migration to a new system.

Now that we are in 2016, the old system is being retired, and to ensure that you retain email client access over the coming weeks, please check your settings and ensure that your username has been updated to your email address.

If needed, you can use a page that we created in May to remind yourself of your primary email.

You may also now use email aliases, as long as they are entered in full.

Some background on this:

Our new system is configured to only authenticate using a full email address as the username when accessing your account with an email client (webmail remains the same as before).

The main reasons for this update are both for stability and security.

For an email client to authenticate with just a username, it needs to ‘search’ a few levels deeper in the system in order to match the username against the correct email address. Since email clients connect to the servers every couple of minutes (unlike webmail), this dramatically increases server load and can impact the speed of your email experience.

Changing to authenticate with a full email address instead unambiguously defines the connection account, reducing any chance of a cross-account security incident.

As always if you have any problems or questions, please contact us at help@aluminati.net.