[Greennet-l] GreenNet Autumn 2008 Newsletter

[GreenNet User Support]

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Dear GreenNet members,

Topics included in this newsletter:

*GreenNet News
*Withdrawal of Global Roaming Service
*Save Money
*Broadband News
*Green Computing
*Price Change (Small Group membership)
*Support News


GreenNet News

Anna and Liz are very excited to be working on Feminist Tech Exchange
(FTX), coordinating a training exchange for women activists on 9th
November in Cape Town, before the Association of Women in Development
(AWID) meeting. Anna, Liz and Karen are also involved, again through the
APC's Women's Networking Support Programme, in the next phase of Take
Back the Tech, which is helping networking between groups working for
violence prevention. And besides continuing to work on high-level
internet governance issues, promoting civil society interests, Karen has
decided to take over a pub, The Brasenose Arms in Banbury.


Withdrawal of Global Roaming Service

We will be withdrawing the Global Roaming product provided by GreenNet
with effect from Friday 12th December. From this date you will not be
able to connect to the Internet using the iPass Global Roaming service.
Note that normal UK-based dial-up services will not be affected.

We regret that is has become necessary to withdraw this service. The
reason is that the current versions of the client software have now
officially reached their End of Life support cycle and are no longer
supported or updated by iPass. This means that your connection software
will no longer be updated with Software Corrections and phonebook
updates. Technical Support has been withdrawn by iPass for these versions.

If you wish to discuss this further or require more information
regarding GreenNet's internet access products, please do not hesitate to
contact us on 0845 055 4011.


Save Money: Recommend a friend

Beat the credit crunch! If you have a current GreenNet service, and you
get a friend (or an acquaintance - well, anyone really...) to subscribe
to a GreenNet service, we'll extend your own subscription by an extra 3
months for free. We think you ought to benefit for spreading the word of
GreenNet to all and sundry, so if someone you know subscribes on your
recommendation we'll add 3 months to your subscription for free. Just
tell them to mention your name and address or account id when they place
their order.


Broadband News

We have extended our broadband services to include uncapped broadband,
so now you can browse the web without worrying about having a monthly
limit or extra charges. This includes up to 8 MBps broadband and ADSL2+
up to 24 Mbps broadband, both without any monthly limits, and of course
fully covered by GreenNet Support. Whether for your home or office,
GreenNet have the right membership for you, offering you what is
probably the most supported and ethically guided broadband service in
the UK.

Are you fed up with having to listen to hold music while trying to get
in touch with your broadband provider?!

GreenNet don't have an automated telephone system, all our phones are
answered by us with the aim of solving your problems as quickly and
efficiently as possible. So why not give us a ring on 0845 055 4011 to
see if you can switch to GreenNet Broadband for your home or office.


Green Computing

Green PC - Linux/Ubuntu PC - Windows PC - GreenNet have been offering an
ultra low power computer to organisations and home users for the last
few months with a great amount of interest simply from our website. We
had a mention in the Guardian and on the APCNews site about this
revolutionary new machine called the Aleutia E2. A computer that runs on
just 8 watts of electricity, is completely silent and has no moving
parts and is the size of a few stacked up CD cases, all for under £200.

The Small Green PC will also be available on the GreenNet site over the
coming few weeks, which is designed more for home/office users rather
than those on-the-go. This is similar to your normal PC with a hard
drive, fan, CD/DVD drives but still using a fraction of the power that a
regular PC would, saving you money and helping reduce the effects on the
environment.


Changes to Small Group pricing

Please note the price of "Small Group" annual subscription has been
increased from £125+VAT to £150+VAT. This is the first and only
subscription price increase we have made for years if not decades! Most
other services have actually gone down in price. Small Group membership
is particularly suitable for smaller organisations and gives you 200MB
of webspace for your site, annual domain registration, 5 mailboxes and
many other techie features, including GreenNet's legendary support.


Support News

Phishing Recently various GreenNet users have received a fraudulent
email claiming to be from something like "webmail.gn.apc.org team" and
asking for login details to email accounts. We never ask for passwords
by email, and besides we call ourselves the GreenNet collective. The
email was sent by a group based in Nigeria hoping to use webmail
accounts to send even more scams. We are now blocking this type of spam,
but if you have given your password to someone you don't completely
trust, or sent it via email, please let us know immediately.

Please don't ever send your password by email - although the connection
between you and our servers should be secure if you have your email set
up to use TLS or SSL, this probably isn't the case at the other end. If
you want end-to-end email security, we suggest Thunderbird with GPG and
Enigmail (http://enigmail.mozdev.org/).

GreenNet provides excellent defences against spam (unsolicited bulk
email) as standard. Uniquely as far as we know, the filtering we do is
geared specifically to voluntary groups and activists. However, there
are still occasional problems with email. If you do get a significant
amount of spam, this may be because it is being sent to a network
outside GreenNet's control that then forwards it on. We also now offer
spam-filtering as a dedicated service.

Spam markup We have now re-introduced marking of suspected spam on
GreenNet mailboxes. The mark "?spam" will appear at the start of the
Subject line like this:

Subject: ?spam Pills, watches and other worthless advertising

This should help you recognise certain type of spam and scams, and if
you are one of the unfortunate few who get wodges of junk, help you set
up a filter in your email program to delete it all. If something is
wrongly marked, please let us know at support at gn.apc.org. You can also
send examples of spam to "spam" at the same domain name, and non-spam to
"notspam", which updates the shared filters at GreenNet and if necessary
reports it to SpamCop.net and other global anti-spam resources.


Ana, Anna, Cedric, Howard, Ian, Liz, Marek, Michael, and Sharif
The GreenNet collective

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GreenNet User Support

GreenNet supports a progressive community working for Peace,
the Environment, Gender Equality and Social Justice, through
the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs).

GreenNet, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT
UK Tel:  0845 055 4011
Intl:    +44 (0)20 7065 0935
Fax:     +44 (0)20 7065 0936
Registered in England & Wales, Company No. 02070438
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