I'm a paranoid person, so I provide and use secure versions of a number of vee.net services. You should use them, too.
Secure services
The following secure services are available:
You can access your email securely using IMAPS, POP3S or using webmail.vee.net.
IMAPS is the secure version of IMAP. POP3S is likewise the secure version of POP3. Most email clients which can do IMAP or POP can also do IMAPS or POP3S. Look for a configuration option called "Use secure connecton (SSL)" or something similar. For the geeks: IMAPS uses port 993, POP3S uses port 995.
Webmail always uses a secure connection, there's nothing you need to do to make your webmail secure.
Please read the SSL Certificates section below, it will make using secure email much happier for you.
Websites
If I am hosting a website for you, you probably want to be able to update your website from time to time. This is easy to acheive, once you know how. Unlike most website hosting services, vee.net doesnot let you use FTP to transfer files to and from your website. This is because FTP is inherently insecure, and I don't like that.
So, how does Bob update his vee.net-hosted website? He uses SCP. SCP clients are available for most platforms. Here's a few recommendations:
- Windows GUI client: WinSCP
- Windows command line (text) client: Putty pscp
- Others to come...
Jabber
The jabber.vee.net server supports SSL connections so that your password, buddy lists, messages, chats and other data is encrypted when you send it to the server. Secure Jabber runs on port 5223.
LDAP directory
I run an LDAP directory server. This can be accessed using LDAPS, on port 636.
SSL Certificates
Anyway, the problem of course is that I can't afford the several "officially" signed SSL certificates which I need to run all of these secure services. As a result I sign my own, and this causes your web browser, email client and other software to complain bitterly because it doesn't recognise my certificates. This is fine, you can tell the software to ignore the "problem" and continue, and your data will be happily be encrypted in transit over the network.
If you want your software to quit complaining, you can install a copy of my CA certificate by clicking on the appropriate link below. It will be good until mid 2013 or so.
- A CA certificate for Netscape, Mozilla, and other sane programs. Geeky description: This is a PEM format CA cert, a Base64 encoded DER format cert with headers and footers.
- A CA certificate for Microsoft Internet Explorer, Outlook and other silly programs. Geeky description: This is a raw binary DER format CA cert.