IN DRAFT Recommend removing this page - all covered by CAcert Communication Policy
Email Account Policy for CAcert Community and organisation
Also refer to CAcert Communication Policy WIP
email support types
There are two types of CAcert email support in the CAcert organisation: email accounts and email distribution:
Email Accounts
- One has an individual email address within the CAcert domain, has access to the inbox and can submit email with CAcert domain sender address. Emails sent and received can be logged and archived by CAcert. The email transports are secured. Content encryption is left to the end user. There is a high level of (secured user/password) access control. Protection of account is done via user/password access control and transport encryption (e.g. IMAPS/POPS over SSL/TLS for postbox access and SMTPS/mail submission over SSL/TLS for MTA access). The use of certificates in this peering access and transport is strongly recommended.
Email Distribution
- The email address is basically an email alias, The email address has the name of a list of individual email addresses. This can be managed and archived eg via web tooling (mailman). There is a lower level of access control.
Emails sent to and from CAcert are subjected to spam filtering (eg Spam Assassin), virus filtering, contact (peer) point access filtering (eg Greylisting). CAcert does not warrant these filterings.
Email Accounts
Accounts such as: xyz@cacert.org
xyz@cacert.org format of accounts are only available to those who are mentioned for a certain responsibility/task (Office) on the CAcert organisation chart or are CAcert Community Members that have a certain task/responsibility within the CAcert Community.
The email account or address is only maintained and available for a CAcert Office (xyz is the name of the Office) or individual as long as the person has a CAcert responsibility/task within an Office within the CAcert organisation (eg the CAcert is mentioning the individual).
There is a preference to use the Office name as account name as individuals will be in charge for a limited period of time and one can separate different tasks more easily.
Emails with the sender of an email address originating from "cacert.org" domain will be seen as a CAcert "official" by the internet user.
One has to apply for this email account address. The email address should have full name of the person and a short reference to the Office. CAcert association board decides on an application (one has to request the email account).
CAcert association board decides on an application (one has to apply for it and provide arguments). The CAcert board will be very conservative on the decision.
Alias lists
Alias lists have the following format xyz@lists.cacert.org .
Examples of these lists are CAcert email lists, e.g.:
cacert-board@lists.cacert.org ,
cacert-policy@lists.cacert.org .
For historical reasons some lists (or alias addresses) will exist as eg support@cacert.org , but are essentially an alias to some name of a alias list in list.cacert.org.
Posts made to CAcert email lists, etc., are contribitions for community use, as described in the CAcert Community Agreement (CCA) contribution paragraph.
Currently CAcert uses GNU mailman for the lists (which is implemented as archiving system, email list management via web interface and an alias with list members). The lists are sometimes moderated and are not free to join (eg cacert-policy@lists.cacert.org which is for CAcert Community Members only). One has to subscribe to the list. The email are archived and might not be protected to search engines. The current email lists (@lists.cacert.org) are listed here.
Proposals for initiation of an email list should be addressed to Management-Sub-Commitee (M-SC). The board routinely delegates M-SC to handle decisions on email.
Postbox address and access requirements
There is a imaps/pops/webmail associated with the email account from which account email sent to the address in the domain cacert.org can be picked up.
It is a policy that if the user uses cacert.org as sender address to send the email via the community.cacert.org Mail Transport Agent (MTA) of CAcert. Sender address should state the full name of the person and responsibility, so recipient is made aware of Office and/or the title of the sender (eg. John Nickel PR < john@community.cacert.org , Judy Valentine M-SC < judy@cacert.org >, Peter Pathston EDU < education@cacert.org >, ...).
Some internal email account management policies:
- Emails accounts will be logged and sometimes also archived. The account inbox should be emptied regularly.
- Email lists are archived.
- There is a policy to maintain a personal archive of email sent and received for email accounts. E.g. on arbitration there might be a request to provide the archived emails for CAcert email accounts.
- The CAcert email account is not for private emails.
Email address usage such as " cacert@mydomain.com " (and without a full name) should be omitted.
The email system administrator(s) of CAcert will do the administration and maintenance of the email addresses. Technologies in use and actions taken will be done by these system administrator under responsibility of the CAcert board. Open Source email tools will be used. Access will be protected by CAcert certificates as much as possible. For email access there is configuration help available (need to be updated due to this policy. More on email handling one is referred to: here (need to be updated due to this policy).