Virgin Media Community

[bondquest]

I've started to get this error message when I try and send emails on my Android phone from home.

I had a quick look on the forums, and this appears to be a (another) potential problem with Virgin mail, but I'd like some help to try and find out how to confirm this.

I use webmail on my windows laptop at home, and it sends and receives emails OK.

I sometimes use my Android phone to send and receive the same emails on my phone, using the standard android email app, not the gmail app, but all of a sudden it has stopped being able to send emails, and comes up with this error message, 525 5.7.13 Authentication Denied (VM305).

As a test I tried to send an email from my phone to my gmail account, it failed. I disconnected the phone from the network and sent the email again over the BT mobile network and it worked fine.

I tested the system the other way round, and sent a gmail from my phone to my ntlworld account on the phone, while it was on my home network and it worked fine.

So it's just sending emails using the native email app on an Android phone while connected to the home network that appears to be the problem.

How do I find out whether Virgin think this a spambot on my network (the phone's only a month old), or whether this is a Virgin mail issue?

Thanks for reading.

[用心棒 · Accepted solution]

it is likely your Virgin Media home network's public IP Address appears on Spamhaus's lists, to confirm this perform the following steps from the device that cannot send:

• browse to https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip&ia=answer and note the Your IP address is value
• go to https://www.spamhaus.org/lookup/
• enter the Your IP address is value (from step 1) in the IP Address field and select Lookup
• excluding the PBL, is it reported as listed elsewhere; do not post the results here without redacting your public IP address from text and underlying URLs?

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[bondquest]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

The IP address is listed in the Spamhaus XBL and Spamhaus CSS.

Can you tell me how I go about finding out which device is infected, or how to interpret the Spamhaus results.

I've got the following devices connected to the home network;

2 x Windows 10 laptops (although one of those isn't used very much)

2 x Android mobiles

1 x Android tablet

2 x Sky+ HD devices

2 x Smart security cameras

Having said that, only 7 devices are currently listed on the Hub 3.0.

Wireshark has been running a tcp port 25 wireless check for 25 minutes so far, nothing is reported.

Thanking you in anticipation.

Regards

PS - Can I PM you?

[用心棒]

See Searching for Spambots on your network

[bondquest]

Thanks for the prompt reply again.

Is it safe to assume that it won't be the Sky boxes or security cameras that are infected (sending spam), as I've had them for ages without any previous issues.

That would leave the two laptops, the two Android phones, and the Android tablet, which should be easy to test on Wireshark.

I've set the Hotspot up, and connected my android phone, the wife's at work.

I've had a couple of friends come round (in a COVID secure way) and use my wi-fi network. One came round yesterday and used his phone on the network. Could it have been them? Doubt it somehow.

The last Spamhaus detection was "The last detection occurred at: January 27 2021, 11:40 (UTC timezone, +/- 1 minute)" which is around the time I tried to send an email on my android mobile.

I've just sent a test email from my ntlworld account using webmail on my laptop and that sent OK. I tried the same thing on my mobile and it came up with the same error message. I don't understand why one works and the other doesn't as they are both using the same IP address.

Regards

[jem101 · Accepted solution]

The way it connects via webmail is completely different to how an app on the phone connects - only the latter needs to be checked to see if the source address is on the list.

And don't be too quick to rule out the cameras, especially if they had any form of firmware update recently. Are they wired back to the hub over ethernet or wifi connected?

[bondquest]

They're wi-fi connected, but I've never updated their firmware.

[bondquest]

I've just tried to sign in to my ntlworld mail settings on my android phone, but it keeps giving me the "unable to connect to server" error message.

Is this because when it tries to check outgoing server settings it's blocked?

[bondquest]

Can you confirm I have selected the correct network connection to run the Wireshark "tcp port 25" test on?

Thanks

[用心棒]

If you are on Stage 3 - turn on Wifi Hostpot and identify hotspot interface then yes; further validation can be made by rerunning the telnet command from a device connected to the hotspot.