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Free email accounts are available to HCA members only by request to the Membership Chairperson. You may setup your own email program to send and receive email using this account or access it on the internet. After we set you up, You may access your HCA Email Account on the internet here and logon as "username@houstoncounselor.org" where username is your first initial and first seven letters of your last name -- no spaces, and a total of eight lowercase letters. (Note: the assigned username will be the same as you use at the office, if we have it listed in your record.) Then enter the default password "hcaXXXX", or the password sent to you, which you may change after you logon for the first time. If you can not logon, please send email to the Membership Chairperson or contact an HCA Officer. A fogotten password may be reset to the default "hcaXXXX" only.
HCA free email accounts do not include access to the internet, which means you must have purchased access to the internet through an ISP (Internet Service Provider) like Verizon.net, SBCglobal.net, or Comcast.net. You can then go to the website "http://email.houstoncounselor.org" where your web based HCA Email Account is located OR setup an account in your OutLook Express email program to send and receive your houstoncounselor.org email. You can get setup help and instructions for OutLook Express in Windows 95/98 here or for Windows XP here. However, web based email is very useful when your place of employment does not want you to receive email not related to company business or even store it on their computer. Also, malicious email can do no harm when it is not on your company computer, (unless you download an attachment and open it). Our free HCA email accounts are kept on our ISP's computers where they can deal with the problems better than us. The only inconvenient problem with web based email accounts is that when you want to review some email you have received or saved, its not on your computer; so you have to access the internet and go connect to the computer where it is stored -- just like you will have to do if you use the web based "email.houstoncounselor.org" email accounts. Confused? Want to know more? Ask our WebMaster, who can help you!
If you do not have your own ISP, you may contact us for a recommendation for a Dialup, DSL, or Cable connection. After you get your own ISP (internet access service) you will be given all the email accounts you want as part of the service, plus your own homepage most of the time! Access to the internet is normally through your phone lines; this method is called "dialup access", and the ISP will provide a special local phone number which you setup your computer to call and connect to the internet. Other faster connections are DSL and Cable, which cost much more. The DSL works over your phone lines and the cable connection is through the TV cable. And that's how it works . . .
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