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It’s easier to upgrade to Thunderbird 3.1 from older versions of Thunderbird and other email clients like Outlook and Outlook Express.

Our new Migration Assistant will help you set up Thunderbird the way you want it. And our import tools help you bring your emails, address books, and settings from your older email program to Thunderbird 3.1.

Tabs and Search
Thunderbird 3.1 changes the way you do email with tabbed email, and a new set of search tools helps you find your emails faster.

Quick Filter Toolbar
The new Quick Filter Toolbar lets you filter your email faster. Start typing in words in the Quick Filter search box and the results are displayed instantly. Or you can filter your email by New Messages, Tags, and people in your Address Book. You can also “Pin” or save a Filter and use it across multiple folders.

Tabs
If you like Firefox’s tabbed browsing, you’re going to love tabbed email. Tabbed email lets you load emails in separate tabs so you can quickly jump between them. Perhaps you’re responding to an email and need to refer back to an earlier email. Tabbed email lets you keep multiple emails open for easy reference.

Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will now open that message in a new tab window. Right-clicking on messages or folders will open them in a tab in the background.

When quitting Thunderbird, visible tabs will be saved and will be restored when you open Thunderbird the next time. There is also a new Tab menu on the Tab toolbar to help you switch between Tabs.

Download Thunderbird 3.1.2

This version comes with support of Postbox and Wyzo. MozBackup was updated and now works correctly with Firefox 3.6, Thunderbird 3.0 and SeaMonkey 2. Backup process via command line was updated too.

MozBackup is compatible with:

• Firefox 1.0 – 3.6
• Thunderbird 1.0 – 3.0
• Sunbird 0.3 – 0.9
• Flock 1.0 – 2.0
• Postbox 1.0 – 1.1
• SeaMonkey 1.0a – 2.0
• Mozilla Suite 1.7 – 1.7.x
• Spicebird 0.4 – 0.8
• Songbird 1.0
• Netscape 7.x, 9.x
• Wyzo

Changes:

MozBackup 1.4.10

• Fix one problem with automatic backups

MozBackup 1.4.10 Beta 1

• Add support for Firefox 3.6
• Add support for Thunderbird 3.0

Download MozBackup 1.4.10 Beta 1

Isn’t Gmail supposed to have multiple points of failure? Well yes, Gmail has thousands and thousands of overlapping mail servers which can pic up the slack if any one fails because the data is replicated and spread all around. But there are also request servers which do nothing but route the requests for email to whichever server (with the right emails on it) happens to be available.

It tuns out that Google took down some regular email servers for routine maintenance, and because of some recent changes, that overloaded the request servers. Google engineering VP Ben Treynor explains on the Gmail Blog:

At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system “stop sending us traffic, we’re too slow!”. This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn’t access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn’t be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don’t use the same routers.

So much for redundancy.

Full Story

We all know that spammers will do whatever it takes to find a way to send their advertisements and scams to potential victims. Spammers are circumventing methods services like Gmail, HotMail, and Yahoo use to stop automated spam to the point that even legitimate users of these services are unwitting victims of anti-spam.

Larry Seltzer at eWeek posted a blog Spammers Sidestep SMTP about what happens when spammers start using free Web-based services such as Gmail, HotMail, and Yahoo mail systems to send spam. Seltzer suggests new tests need to be developed to check for “humanness” — or perhaps a change in how e-mail is sent and received are potential solutions.

Full Story

The ongoing investigation into the hacking of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account now appears to center on the son of a Democratic state legislator in Tennessee. A federal grand jury convened Tuesday morning in Chattanooga to hear testimony from friends of David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee whose apartment was raided by the FBI early Sunday morning, but ended their session for the day without issuing an indictment.

Kernell, whose father is Tennessee State Representative Michael Kernell, is the target of widespread speculation in the blogosphere. The attention came after a post appeared on the online chat board, 4chan, describing how it “took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info” needed to access the Alaska governor’s personal e-mail account using Yahoo’s password reset feature. (A Yahoo spokesperson indicated that the company is continually reviewing its security procedures, but had not planned any specific changes yet.)

According to the 4chan message, the author’s curiosity had been piqued by press reports concerning Palin’s alleged use of another, more public, Yahoo account, to conduct state business. After gaining access to the account, the self-described hacker wrote, he had searched without success for incriminating e-mails, and posted the new account password to the board so others could do the same. He soon realized that “if this sh*t ever got to the FBI I was f—ed, I panicked.” The author of the post used the handle “Rubico,” which was tied to a Yahoo e-mail address easily linked to Kernell via Google searches—though given the penchant for pranksterism at 4chan, this was scarcely definitive evidence.

Law enforcement officials did not appear to have taken an overt interest in Kernell as quickly as bloggers had. But after IP logs retained by the proxy service Palin’s hacker had used pointed to the Commons at Knoxville apartment complex where Kernell lives, FBI agents arrived at the student’s residence early Sunday morning to search the premises, breaking up a party in the process.

Full Story

Thunderbird 2 features many new enhancements to help you better manage your unruly inbox, and stay informed. Thunderbird 2 scales to the most sophisticated organizational needs while making it easy to find what you need.

Mozilla has bolstered Thunderbird’s acclaimed security and privacy measures to ensure that your communications and identity remain safe. It’s like having your own security guard online.

Thunderbird allows you to customize your email to suit your specific needs whether it’s how you search and find messages or listening to music right out of your inbox.

Fixed in Thunderbird 2.0.0.14
MFSA 2008-15 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.1.13)
MFSA 2008-14 JavaScript privilege escalation and arbitrary code execution

Download Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.14