Penny Post Thunderbird Extension - Advanced Configuration
This is a guide for users who would like to further configure the extension. For most users the defaults should suffice and hence this configuration is optional.
By default the extension comes configured to use the
PennyPost CommandLine as the default
external stamp program. But if you wish to use another stamp program, you will probably need to tweak these settings.
NOTE: See ThunderBirdExtensionQuickConfiguration for how to access the PennyPost options window.
General Settings Tab
This tab lets you configure the settings that apply to the extension as a whole and do no fall under any other tab category.
Stamp Options
- Default Algorithm: Select the algorithm you wish to use as default when you click the Stamp & Send button on the compose window. This is also transmitted as your preferred algorithm for receiving stamped emails.
- Days to invalid: Received stamps are dated. Ideally you should not accept stamps that are more than 1 day old unless you have a known delay in receiving email at your incoming email server. The date of receipt of an email is the day it actually arrives at your incoming email server and not the day you download it from the server. So setting this to 1 day implies that the email should arrive at your server the same day it was stamped by the sender.
- Automatically mark Junk: Enabling this option will cause any stamped email with an invalid stamp to be marked as Junk.
- Skip date verification: This will skip date verification on stamps alltogether. It is not recommended that you enable this option.
Other Options
- Add scrollbars: This setting applies to Thunderbird versions below 2.0. For newer versions of Thunderbird leave this disabled.
- Header pane height: This setting applies to Thunderbird versions below 2.0.
- Add PennyPost signature: Enable this option if you want PennyPost to add a two line message at the bottom of your stamped emails. The message reads "This email has been stamped using Penny Post. Stamping email helps combat spam. Find out more about stamping your email at: http://pennypost.sourceforge.net∞"
This tab lets you control settings used by
HashCash.
- Enable HashCash: This controls if PennyPost will attempt to generate and verify HashCash stamps. Disable this if you know that your external stamp program does not have support for HashCash.
- Version: This controls which version of HashCash is used for stamp generation. Available versions depend both on your external stamp program and the current HashCash specification.∞
- Value: This specifies the value (price) of the generated outgoing stamp. Higher value stamps take longer to generate but on the flip side low value stamps are meaningless to the recepient as even a spammer could generate them easily. So low value stamps defeat the very purpose of stamping email. It is recommended you set this value so that it takes at least 1 minute to generate the stamp on your computer.
- Max version accepted: This specifies the maximum version of a received HashCash stamp that PennyPost will attempt to verify. Available versions depend both on your external stamp program and the current HashCash specification.∞
- Min value accepted: PennyPost will not attempt to verify stamps that are below this value (price) and the stamp will automatically be treated as invalid. It is important not allow low value stamps as even an average computer can generate low value HashCash stamps quite quickly and so it is quite possible that you receive 'low value' stamped spam!
MBound Settings Tab
This tab lets you control settings used by
MBound.
- Enable MBound: This controls if PennyPost will attempt to generate and verify MBound stamps. Disable this if you know that your external stamp program does not have support for MBound.
- Version: This controls which version of MBound is used for stamp generation. Available versions depend on your external stamp program.
- Value: This specifies the CPU value (price) of the generated outgoing stamp. Higher value stamps take longer to generate but on the flip side low value stamps are meaningless to the recepient as even a spammer could generate them easily. So low value stamps defeat the very purpose of stamping email. It is recommended you set this value so that it takes at least 1 minute to generate the stamp on your computer.
- Depth: This specifies the memory value (price) of the generated outgoing stamp. Higher values take longer to generate and verify. Keep this value in the thousands.
- Max version accepted: This specifies the maximum version of a received MBound stamp that PennyPost will attempt to verify. Available versions depend on your external stamp program.
- Min value accepted: PennyPost will not attempt to verify stamps that are below this value (price) and the stamp will automatically be treated as invalid. It is important not allow low value stamps as even an average computer can generate low value MBound stamps quite quickly and so it is quite possible that you receive 'low value' stamped spam!
- Min depth accepted: Similar to Min value accepted, except this controls how much memory access has been done before the stamp was generated.
- Max depth accepted: MBound stamps cannot be verified without first traversing the depth on the stamp. It is important to limit the depth to which you will attempt to verify an MBound stamp otherwise fake stamps with very large depth will cause your computer to slow down during verification. It is recommended you keep this value in the thousands.
CategoryThunderBirdExt
