Email switched off

[#1]

Hi, Thank you for your message.

The answer to your questions is no to both I just have the default address. 

My problem is that plusnet switched me off, they have now put my email back on but I am not recieving emails. LaurenB from PlusNet help has been dealing with it.

Many thanks

[#2]

OK, I understand. Unfortunately I cannot explain (or understand) why you cannot receive email - can you send from that address? If you can, I can only suggest that @LaurenB (or one of her Help team colleagues) are the only ones who can investigate the situation. Hopefully now I have tagged them again, they will pick this up. Again, my apologies for not being able to assist, but like you, I am only a Community member.

[#3]

Hey @jandjmp

Thanks a lot for keeping in touch. Are you using webmail or your own third party client? I can see three emails on our server, all of which are from 27/11/2021. Can you also please send me a PM with your full Plusnet email address?

[#4]

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@jandjmp wrote:

I now have internet with BT and I can access my old PlusNet email's but I am still not receiving any new email's (I have tried sending one to myself from BT).

I get unable to deliver message Invalid Recipient

---

I feel the need to clarify some details here, rather than presume them...

1. You are now with BT as your ISP
2. Connecting via your new ISP you can access your PlusNet mailbox - is that using a PC based mail client?  POP3 or IMAP?
3. Is your belief that you are not RECEIVING new emails based solely on you being unable to SEND any via your PlusNet email account?  In other words have you tried sending an email via another email account, independent of that associated with your closed PlusNet account?

Invalid recipient can be a deceptive error message, especially when connecting from a third party ISP connection to PlusNet's relay servers.  To successfully use PlusNet's relay servers when you do not have a PlusNet account, the following need to be true...

1. You must have an email only account which is permitted to use the relay servers - some (legacy) email only accounts do not allow access to the relay servers - these should not be in use any more, but there was a recent case of a downgrade to email only being done to the wrong type of email only account
2. The email application configuration for the SMTP server MUST use account authentication
3. The IP address of the ISP used to connect to the internet must not be on any black list

You can eliminate all of the variables here by running a SMTP connection diagnostic using TELNET ... it is a little tedious, but it will remove the guess work over what is actually going wrong here.  See below.

Test SMTP authentication

Email programs often report username / password error for issues not actually related to those being wrong, but for other connectivity issues. Such can be very frustrating when you are convinced that they are correct. Testing SMTP authentication through a command line interface can deliver a more precise error message. The following describes how to do this using TELNET.

This is not difficult, but you need the following resources which might be unfamiliar...

1. TELNET - this might need installing as an additional option, for Windows see enabling TELNET.
2. A code64 encoder / decoder such as this.

You can use TELNET to communicate direct with the SMTP server as follows...

Open the code64 encoder in a web browser and leave ready for use in the following steps.

Launch a windows command line window (DOS window) - press windows-key+R - type CMD into the run box - click OK

Enter...

telnet relay.plus.net 587

Press enter. Note if you use one of the other brand email services, use the appropriate SMTP server name for that brand. In response to SMTP server I'm here message, say 'HELLO'...

EHLO relay.plus.net

The SMTP server will then report what it can do after which tell the server you wish to authenticate...

AUTH login

The server should return the following, which is a base64 encoded string that requires your username:

334 VXNlcm5hbWU6

Use the code64 encoder to encode your username and paste it into the telnet window and press enter. For example:

bXl1c2VybmFtZQ==

The server should return the following, which is a base64 encoded string that requires your password:

334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6

Paste the base64 encoded password for the username. For example:

bXlwYXNzd29yZA==

The server will then report success or failure, any failure message should clearly indicate the reason for the failure. If the reason for the failure is not clear, please report back the message.

Close the SMTP / TELNET session by entering

quit

The session should look something similar to the below wherein your input is in bold...

220 avasout03 smtp relay.plus.net
EHLO relay.plus.net
250-avasout03 hello [your IP address], pleased to meet you
250-HELP
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
250-SIZE 104857600
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-STARTTLS
250 OK
AUTH LOGIN
334 VXNlcm5hbWU6
bXl1c2VybmFtZQ==
334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6
bXlwYXNzd29yZA==
235 ... authentication succeeded
quit
221 avasout03 smtp closing connection
Connection to host lost.

Here are some examples of failure responses...

535 ...authentication rejected [as username / password is wrong]
535 ...authentication rejected as source IP has a poor reputation
535 Too many SMTP auth failures. Please try again later.

There is one other possibility, but that would be very odd ... if the account is all OK and the access to the SMTP server is all OK and you can send emails successfully to other addressees, but not to your self, that would imply that the DNS routing details for your domain (youraccount.plus.com) have either been lost or have not replicated to your new ISP's DNS servers.

You could try running a nslookup query ...

• Launch a DOS (CMD) window
• Enter the following commands
  • nslookup
  • set type=mx
  • yourplusnetaccount.plus.com

That should return something like ...

yourplusnetaccount.plus.com      MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx.avasin.plus.net

If you get something like ...

*** UnKnown can't find yourplusnetaccount.plus.com: Non-existent domain

Then the email account restoration is not complete ... and would explain the unable to deliver message Invalid Recipient response.

[#5]

Thanks, @Townman 

[#6]

Thank you for your email, as part of my answer please see the attachement.

I am PC based for emails (now with BT, no problems on this service) I can send emails from my Plusnet Email only account.

I do not get emails from any sender as I have been trying to get OPT's to get into other accounts and nothing is getting to me also friends say that their emails are being bounced back to them!

I was able to get emails from all of my contacts before my account was closed early now it is an email only account I cannot recieve any.

Adam 945 Plusnet help team has contacted me and I have sent him a reply.

Regards

[#7]

Two points to note…

1 you need to enable telnet as per the first instruction.

2 you need to put your Plusnet account name in place of youraccountname.plus.com
- then just report if the MX server is reported (keep your account name private!!).

[#8]

Hi, I have installed Telnet as you said and the result is in the attachment

I tried this several times

[#9]

Please check the instructions - you need to telnet to port 587 - without specifying the port, the connection will be to the default port for telnet ... which is not going to do what is required.

That said, now that you have clarified that you can send to other email addresses via the PlusNet SMTP server, then that suggests that the account is set up properly ... but possibly the MX record is missing.

[#10]

Hi I followed this part of the instructions and the the attachment in the last message was the result.

1. TELNET - this might need installing as an additional option, for Windows see enabling TELNET.
2. A code64 encoder / decoder such as this.

You can use TELNET to communicate direct with the SMTP server as follows...

Open the code64 encoder in a web browser and leave ready for use in the following steps.

Launch a windows command line window (DOS window) - press windows-key+R - type CMD into the run box - click OK

Enter...

telnet relay.plus.net 587

Press enter. Note if you use one of the other brand email services, use the appropriate SMTP server name for that brand. 

[#11 · Accepted solution]

Hiya @jandjmp, I have replied to your PM for you with some further info.

[#12]

Having rerun the diagnostics, indeed I can confirm that the connection will disconnect if you do not respond to the connection confirmation with the EHLO command ... before the connection timeout expires.