Many Soldiers or civilians who are just entering the Army may not be aware they can use certain hand-held devices or smartphones to check their Army Knowledge Online/Defense Knowledge Online e-mail.  From the AKO/DKO Frequently-Asked Questions, I’d like to provide you with the below information.

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Configuration and troubleshooting support for handheld devices is not currently available from the AKO/DKO Customer Support Center; however, these devices may be used with the AKO/DKO e-mail service.  To configure your handheld device, please refer to the device vendor's instructions. For your convenience, the following describes pertinent AKO/DKO e-mail server information.

Some devices support the use of IMAP natively and others support third-party IMAP clients.  The use of a third option, email aggregators, as an alternative is not consistent with Army security policy.

Note that the options above will not provide you with digital signature and encryption (S/MIME).  Support  is available only for AKO Go Mobile devices.  To learn more, visit:  http://gomobile.dko.mil.

IMAP-enabled Device

If the handheld device has a mobile version of Outlook or another external email client (not an email aggregator as described below), you are able to configure your handheld device to receive your mail. Most devices have support for IMAP access to your mail natively.  If your device does not currently have an IMAP-enabled mail client, you can search the web to find free alternatives.

For IMAP-Enabled devices:

• Incoming mail server: imap.us.army.mil port: 993. This server requires the client to connect via SSL.
• Outgoing mail server: mailrouter.us.army.mil port: 465. This server requires the client to connect via SSL.

Email Aggregator

Note that using your AKO/DKO webmail through an email aggregator is not allowed by Army Regulations.

Using an email aggregator such as the Blackberry Internet Service or Yahoo’s or Gmail’s external POP3 support creates a security risk and sets the conditions for a possible compromise of your AKO/DKO username and password credentials since that password is stored on external servers.

Additionally, Army regulations (AR 25-2 para 4-5a8) prohibit auto-forwarding of official mail to non-official accounts and from providing your AKO credentials to unauthorized individuals.

To prevent this risk, and mitigate the potential for a possible compromise of AKO/DKO user credentials, on February 25, 2008 AKO/DKO began blocking access to IMAP from these types of sites.

You may still use webmail (webmail.us.army.mil) or IMAP via a client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird to retrieve your mail.  Directions for configuring IMAP can be found at help.us.army.mil under the "Find Answers" link. 

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 If you need help with your AKO/DKO account, please visit the portal help page: http://tinyurl.com/AKO-DKO-Support