Email Verification Code

[DizzyB]

When trying to log onto an external website, it asked me to verify my email address, they sent me a verification email which lasts around 5 minutes. This email has taken hours  to arrive, by which time the code is unusable. Looking for some assistance as to why this may be happening. Thanks

[coenoby]

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@DizzyB wrote:

 Looking for some assistance as to why this may be happening.

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When an email is sent it does not move directly to the receiver's system. In reality it is passed through multiple servers during its journey across the internet.  A delay can occur anywhere along that route.

Also, receiving email services (such as Virgin Media)  often use a process called "greylisting" when they receive an email that comes from a source that they consider to be suspicious.

Putting it simply the receiving system temporarily rejects the email with a ""please try again later" error message. If the email sender and the email itself is legitimate, the original sending system will try again after a delay and the email will be accepted. 

That does mean that if the email is genuine it gets delayed but the process does helps protect you from potential scam or spam emails

If you are interested, you can find out where in its travels that verification email was held up by checking its source / email header data.

1. Assuming you are using the VM webmail service to view your emails, open the affected email and click on the 3 red horizontal bars.                 
2. Click on "View source" from the drop down menu.
3. Select and copy (Ctrl C) the large block of text that appears in the pop up window.
4. Go to this website https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders  and paste that text into the "Paste header" box.
5. Click on the Analyse header tab underneath that box.

It will then work through that information. When it's finished, scroll down a bit to the Relay Information section.You will see that it lists the "hops" the email has  taken and the time (delay) it took at each step as it moved form the sender to your inbox. In reality it does not help you to resolve the problem but it does show you where the delay occurred.

By the way, when you have taken in that information, before you leave the mxtoolbox website, it would be best to scroll down to the bottom of that screen and click on "Permanently forget the email header" to remove your personl infromation from the mxtoolbox website.

Coenoby

[DizzyB]

Many thanks for taking the time to reply to me @Coenoby, I have carried out these steps, and can see from the relay information that there is a 5 hour delay at step 4. 

There is also a red cross at "SPF Authenticated" which suggests a problem with this. Does anyone have any advice how to rectify this.

Thanks

[Client62]

If you email your self from an work email or similar does it also take an age to arrive ?

[coenoby]

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@DizzyB wrote:

 can see from the relay information that there is a 5 hour delay at step 4. 

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Is that the final step? I suspect it is. So now you know where the delay occurred.

Does anyone have any advice how to rectify this.

Sorry, but there is nothing you can do to resolve this yourself. There is no setting you can tweak to make the verification emails arrive in your VM account any sooner. 

Having said that, you might find that if you used a different email service with that external website, the verification emails would not take so long to appear. For instance if you switch to using a Gmail account with that website then the verification emails might arrive in your Gmail account within the 5 minute window.

"there is also a red cross at "SPF Authenticated" which suggests a problem with this."

In fact I don't think that's the reason for the delay, In any event "SPF" refers to Sender Policy Framework which is a method of authenticating emails to ensure their sending address has not been "spoofed". It involves checking the SPF record of the sending domain to ensure that the sender of the email is authorised to send emails on behalf of that domain.

The SPF record is published and managed by the organisation who control the domain name that appears in the sender's email address. So if there is an issue with that SPF record then it's for the sending organisation to resolve not you.

One of the Forum Team (VM staff) should be contacting you via this thread in the next day or so.

If this continues to be a problem for you the VM Team might be able to get the relevant VM Technical Team to check this out.

In order to do that you would need to send the VM staff member a copy of the source email header data from one of those delayed emails. It would be best to do that  via the Forum's private Message facility, however, the Forum Team will discuss that with you.

Sorry, I cannot offer more help than that.

Coenoby

[DizzyB]

No, every other email arrives without any delay

[DizzyB]

No, the delayed step 5 was not the last step.

I did try using an alternative Gmail account, and the verification email arrived instantly.

Further turn of events this evening in that I managed to get a quick verification email through and have been able to now access what I needed to. Unsure whether this has now been resolved for me, or a lucky coincidence.

Thanks again for all the advice.

[coenoby]

@DizzyB 

Glad to hear that things are working ok now.

However, I have to say that I think you will find the Gmail account more reliable in the long run 😉

Coenoby