Forum Discussion

bobdowdeswell's avatar
bobdowdeswell
Just joined
2 days ago

Intermittent failure when sending emails

I regularly see a failure when trying to send an email message. I have not kept a detailed diary but my recollection is that this only started since I moved to Windows 11. My email client is Outlook. The failure does not occur on all messages, perhaps 20% and, if I persist, I can eventually send the message. There is always the same techy failure description. Here is one example:

SmtpSubmissionPermanent5XXException: Smtp submission failed. Server 'smtp.virginmedia.com' Port '465'. --> Unexpected SMTP server response. Expected: 235, actual: 525, whole response: 525 5.7.13 Authentication Denied (VM321)

Failure code: dcfa

Can some smart techy person please tell me how to address this. 

email

2 Replies

  • coenoby's avatar
    coenoby
    Very Insightful Person
    2 days ago

    bobdowdeswell​  "Authentication Denied (VM321)"

    VM321 is a very specific VM error code.

    It means that there have been too many invalid authorisation attempts to access your email account and send email in the last hour. As a result VM have put a temporary block on your account to protect it from being misused, by a hacker, for example.

    By "invalid attempts" they mean attempts to access the VM email account that VM have rejected for some reason, such as using the wrong password for example. 

    That explains what the error message means but not why there should be periods when someone or something is causing the invalid attempts to send emails.

    Coenoby

     

     

  • Gareth_L's avatar
    Gareth_L
    Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
    15 hours ago

    Hello bobdowdeswell.

    Thanks for your first post and welcome to our community.
    Sorry to hear you're having an issue sending emails. 

    coenoby was correct with the VM321 error code. It is too many attempts to send emails within an hour's time frame 

    I'd like to investigate this for you and see if we can get your email unlocked.
    If you don't mind, I'll need to send you a private message to pass security. 
    If you can check the envelope at the top right of your screen, that would be great. 
    Gareth_L