Email Account passwords

[#1]

I have two email accounts, one using 'postmaster'. the other using another name. Both accounts have 'mail' passwords and both have 'relay' passwords according to my unreliable memory, so that is four passwords in total. Now I haven't changed these email passwords for a long time, but today I got an email asking for payment of a large amount of Bitcoins (you know the type) and quoting one of my email passwords, so I want to change all four of them. Trouble is I've forgotten how it is done. It is complicated by (I assume) not only that I have to change those passwords at Plusnet, and at my Thunderbird account, but I guess I have to do it to at my Mailwasher account. I've just taken a look at Manage My Email on the Plusnet website, and I haven't been able to find how to change the passwords there.

Please help

[#2]

@penneck Your email accounts have one password each - In 'manage my mail', click the 'mailboxes' tab and then 'edit' against each box in turn. That will allow you to change the passwords. Once done, change them also in Mailwasher and TB.

[#3]

Hello @jab1 

According to some info I found while investigating Manage My Emails, it seems my postmaster account used my Plusnet password (I never found a way of changing it, but fortunately that wasn't the one mentioned in that iffy email I received), but I was able to change the password in my other email account. That one only had one password that I could find.

Mailwasher is a bit strange if like me you are not sure what you are supposed to use. It does have something for outgoing emails for each of the two accounts, but that might not be switched on, or it might be switched on but uses the same password as incoming emails use, or it may be switched on and might be settable to another password. To cover all bases I set that password to the same as in Manage My Emails, then selected the 'use the same password as incoming emails', and then switched off that section of the outgoing emails.

It can be a bit difficult finding what passwords you have set in Thunderbird because the Help instructions on the Thunderbird website dont match up with what I can do on the Thunderbird on my pc. I have the latest version of Thunderbird. Do you remember when Plusnet had a major problem with emails a few months back - before I found out it was Plusnet causing the problem, I thought it was a Mailwasher or Thunderbird problem and I had tried investigating things like the passwords so I had password-checking help that was misleading from Thunderbird. I told them their instructions were wrong but they don't seem to have done anything about it. Perhaps it is because I am still using Win 7, and their instructions are only accurate for Win 10 (who knows). Anyway, I managed to find where I can see what passwords Thunderbird had - it had two per email account, so I set them as per Manage My Emails.

The next few days should show if everything is working now.

Thanks for your help. A belated Happy New Year to you

[#4]

A while since I had cause to amend any mail passwords, @penneck , but I never found any problems, but if you have any issues  - let me know, I use MW (an old version, but it still works) and TB on W7, although that will be changing soon to a Linux distribution.

IIRC, the TB instructions are a little out of date, and refer to older versions of the program - as I have found out when investigating how to transfer my TB profile from the W7 machine to the Linux one, but I'm getting there - slowly.

HNY to you, too.

[#5]

These scams use scare tactics, they probably do not have your password, but changing it is a wise move.

The DEFAULT mailbox (usually postmaster@ ) has the same password as your user account.  That password is changed using the ACCOUNT password change journey.  Note that changing the ACCOUNT password will change the password the router needs to connect to the internet.  If you have a Plusnet supplied router, then the password in the router should be updated automatically.  If you have a router not supplied by Plusnet (even if it is a Plusnet router) you will need to change the password in the router yourself.

Avoid special characters are there are some inconsistences between documented permitted special characters, portal accepted special characters and router accepted special characters.

Passwords for secondary mailboxes are changed via the Manage My Mail options in the user portal.

Connection to email is twofold - inbound and outbound, they both need the same userID and password.  Some email applications automatically use the same details for both, others require them to be provides separately, as there are circumstances where the outbound server details might be very different to the inbound (mailbox) service.

[#6]

Hello @Townman ,

The scam email did use some scare tactics, but I saw through them. The worrying part was it did quote one of my passwords (not my Plusnet password), so for safety I modified my email passwords.

I was puzzled because MailWasher and Thunderbird both quoted 4 passwords, but Manage My Mail only let me change one (the second email address). I'm not sure how I ended up before yesterday with 4 passwords, but I assume that bit I mentioned in an earlier part of this topic where passwords were set then apparently switched off meant that I had set 4 passwords but was actually only using 2 of them.

Anyway, I am receiving emails, and as a test I have sent one email from postmaster to my other account, and then replied successfully. I don't know if that is a reliable test, but they both went through Mailwasher so that suggests they went the correct route via Plusnet servers rather than just taking a short cut inside my pc.

Hopefully all is well. Thanks for help. Happy New Year

[#7]

Hi All

Sorry I'm a newbie so if posted in the wrong place I apologise.

Having an old email address passed through several providers last one being Madasafish and now yourselves I can login okay send and receive.  However I would like to change the password for security reasons and I don't see a place in Webmail to do this.  Can someone point me in the right direction please?

jk

[#8 · Accepted solution]

Reset email password

If you are not able to login to the email address using webmail, then it is likely that your email address has been identified as being compromised and has had its password changed. Where email address passwords have been changed to protect the integrity of the service, the Plusnet account password is left unchanged.

Which ISP are you with, Plusnet or one of the other / legacy vISPs?

Plusnet / Force9 / FreeOnline users can only change the password on the DEFAULT email address by changing the password on the user ACCOUNT through the user portal. You can change the password on a secondary mailbox using the Manage My Mail options in the user portal.

Brightview users (Madasafish / FreeNetName / GlobalNet / IC24 / ICScotland / Dialstart / Totalise) logging into webmail should use their full email address. Use the MAAF user portal to update the password on the default email address (change the account password) and use this MAAF guide to change the password on a secondary mailbox address. If you cannot recall the account password, you will need to contact support ... because the account password change process sends an email to the mailbox you cannot now access.

DO NOT USE THE SAME PASSWORD AGAIN for that would allow the continued exploitation of the account. The new password should be cryptic and not one used before.

Note that changing the account password will change the password used for logging on to the relevant user portal. If your email service is NOT a retained legacy service (one associated with a retired internet service account), then the password required by the router to connect to the internet will be changed too. If the router is a Hub Zero or a Hub One supplied by Plusnet it should update automatically. If not, you will need to log into the router, drop the connection, change the password yourself and reconnect.

On the assumption that the email address password has been compromised, I strongly recommend that wherever you have used that email address / password combination as access credentials to services such as Amazon, Netflix, eBay etc., that you also change the passwords on those service as well.

[#9]

Hi @Townman 

Have gone through all the places that used the suspect password, and changed them. It wasn't a lot of places, but now it is 0. Webmail didn't use it, but I don't know how serious that would have been.

I've run Malwarebytes, Microsoft Security Essentials, and S&D. No problems found

Thanks for your help. I think this subject is now closed. Bye