Email problems

[#1]

Think I've read elsewhere on this thread about problems with emails to a .plus.com address being rejected as spam now.  

So it appears that the original issue with verification and receiving emails has been fixed, but we now have a new problem that plus.com emails are being rejected before they arrive in the mailbox.

I just wanted to confirm that Plusnet were looking at this problem as well?

[#2]

Can't check the service status though, that's gone now!

[#3]

@fleurh It would be interesting to know where you have read this, and in what context. AFAIK, that isn't the case?

[#4]

---

@fleurh wrote:

"Think I've read elsewhere on this thread about problems with emails to a .plus.com address being rejected as spam now. "

@jab1 wrote:

@fleurh It would be interesting to know where you have read this, and in what context. ...

---

[aol] Me too [/aol]  

Contrary to various claims at various times by various people that mail is not or will not be lost etc. ... I have (almost always) daily incoming mail from more than one source apparently conspicuous by it's absence.  Last message received Tuesday 9th November 0410 hours.  Perhaps more than a tad coincidental methinks.

Also, the one PN A/C that has spam filtering turned "ON" appears to be potentially missing more things than all those A/Cs where it is turned "OFF" from Wednesday 10th onwards. I can't remember whether AV filtering is always "ON" for all A/Cs or if it's just part of the spam filtering. Once again, perhaps more than a tad coincidental though methinks.

Every time over the last 25 years that email has had issues, this kinda thing happens. It used to be primarily yahoo groups et al, one refusal by PN and messages are suspended until you find out and jump through hoops to get them turned on again ! Not something I use at all now or anything too similar but the same kinda problem does still exist with various other what you might call bulk senders of genuine mail. Bounces or refusals tend to lead to messages lost during the incident at best or being suspended at worst. Any potential problem with spam (or AV) filtering being an issue is somewhat more difficult to analyse due to the inherent delays in changing settings but I may go tweaking to see what happens at some point in time if there is no reliable and informed comment from PN

[#5]

Progress, this morning the 212.159.9.xxx family of SMTP servers are responding.

Seeing relay.plus.net now has both servers 212.159.8.107 & 212.159.9.107 operating,

our SMTP server IP work around has been replaced with normal SMTP server name relay.plus.net

Have we jumped the gun, maybe - only time & monitoring will tell.

[#6]

Tried my email first thing this morning and it worked.   Tested again about an hour later and it didn't work and doesn't work now.

Tells me my password is wrong which it isn't and try later.  It pleases itself whether it works or not.  Very sporadic.  Fortunately for me I am not running a business and can wait.  

There must be some techies in the world to sort this out without workarounds. This "most people" Plusnet speak of are not those reaching their accounts as claimed but those that are not from all the posts.

[#7]

My email (via the iPad client) is working fine this morning. I can send (for the first time in 3 days) and mailboxes update and sync very quickly. I’m on relay.force9.net outgoing.

I notice that the service status still reports problems though.

[#8]

Well said imbart.

Latest input from Status Checker says:

Most customers should now be able to log in their Plusnet email, however they may experience a delay when sending and receiving emails. Plusnet emails can be accessed using an email client as an alternative.

We’re working to fix this as quickly as possible. We’re sorry this is taking longer than expected and for the inconvenience caused.

I'm still waiting as well - loathe to change settings on Thunderbird which still tells me password is wrong, although it works on ipad (albeit v.e.r.y. slowly). Strangely, an email I sent myself from gmail yesterday popped up, but no others.

[#9]

I definitely have mail missing, which should have arrived on the very first day PN admitted there was a problem (it actually started 12 hours earlier). 

[#10]

Today I've been unable to connect via my phone or PC. Webmail seems ok.
I cant believe how long this issue has been taking to resolve.

[#11]

My email did start working yesterday, but this morning it now says my password is wrong too (haven't changed it). The service update now says it wont be updated again until 9am tomorrow morning. So I guess no emails today then. I think I'm going to HAVE to go through the pain of changing my email address (if I can) on every account I have everywhere. I don't run a business from this email address but it's impacting all my various delivery and purchase notifications. I'm not going to try and change anything and just hope it will sort itself tomorrow. I will never go with Plusnet again.

[#12]

As promised yesterday, I left mail tests running overnight. The results carry some concerns:

Started more fine grained tests:

Sending via force9 ( relay.force9.net )   (this is plusnet):

12/11/2021, 21:13 unable to establish SMTP connection to relay.force9.net port 25
12/11/2021, 22:13 unable to establish SMTP connection to relay.force9.net port 25
12/11/2021, 23:13 unable to establish SMTP connection to relay.force9.net port 25
13/11/2021, 00:13 unable to establish SMTP connection to relay.force9.net port 25
13/11/2021 01:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 1.344701 Seconds
13/11/2021 02:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 1.273619 Seconds
13/11/2021 04:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 1.404789 Seconds
13/11/2021 05:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 1.384601 Seconds
13/11/2021 06:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 2.823521 Seconds
13/11/2021 07:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 1.580255 Seconds
13/11/2021 08:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 10.793298 Seconds
13/11/2021 09:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 1.394993 Seconds
13/11/2021 10:13 Testing relay.force9.net Sending took 1.610424 Seconds

Sending via alternate relays: (this is NOT on PLUSNET network...but obviously I am) there are 2 tests on separate relays at each time-point.

12/11/2021, 22:08                    error at after DATA: Connected to 212.159.9.200 but connection died. (#4.4.2)

12/11/2021, 23:08 Testing testJoker Sending took 12.752634 Seconds
13/11/2021                          Sending took 13.05377 Seconds

13/11/2021 00:08 Testing testJoker Sending took 12.860662 Seconds
13/11/2021                         error at after DATA: Connected to 212.159.9.200 but connection died. (#4.4.2)

13/11/2021 01:08 Testing testJoker Sending took 14.615359 Seconds
13/11/2021                         Sending took 12.973715 Seconds

13/11/2021 02:08 Testing testJoker Sending took 12.714071 Seconds
                                   Sending took 12.979906 Seconds

    ...repeating success...<elided> ...

13/11/2021 10:08 Testing testJoker Sending took 13.047647 Seconds
                                   Sending took 18.421365 Seconds

The failures to 212.159.9.200 are interesting. Mostly because this is a host on
plus.net. My mail relay is NOT on (it's a 194.... address) my SMTP request
should never have gone to 212.159.9.200 (at least not as addressable endpoint)

This looks like Plusnet are intercepting SMTP traffic (Deep Packet Inspection?) and redirecting to their own hosts. This is troubling.

$ nslookup 212.159.9.200
200.9.159.212.in-addr.arpa name = mx.avasin.plus.net. <=== NB this is on plus.net (NOT my mail relay)

In terms of incoming, tests sent out via my alternate relay:

1st relay , received mails 23:08-10:08 (so complete)
2nd relay , received mails 23:08 , 1:08-10:08 (so 00:08 is missing, but it was NOT sent)

So it looks like everything that managed to send was received.

[#13]

Still flakey for me, 17 years with PN but this one has done it for me. I think its time to go, apart from some few very helpful PN individuals and the forum members the organisation as a whole has become very poor.

[#14]

Cannot access my email account on my phone as says credentials wrong,   cannot download my emails to my laptop as my account says invalid username and password - all things that have not been changed.  Managed to get to access some of my emails via the web but takes 5 mins or more to load, regular "fetch command" errors, regular "server errors" etc etc or even worse - Service unavailable page.  Yes, I can use another email service to send - but doesn't help with emails coming in, having to show proof of orders on my phone etc etc.  Can I have a proper service status and not this airy fairy stuff that is obviously telling me nothing.  

[#15]

To be honest, not being able to send emails has been a little 'problematic' for me, but not a disaster. I have a gmail account through which I can always send email if I absolutely need to, but appreciate others may not be so lucky.

I'd like to thank PlusNet for the many many years I have been with them when email has worked perfectly well.