Email not working since 15/04/24

[al67]

Seems that there a lot of problems being reported since yesterday, 15/04/24, mainly concerned with the SMTP server for outgoing mail.

For me, I get:

16/04/24, 23:04:47: SEND - sending mail message(s) - 1 message(s) in queue
16/04/24, 23:04:47: SEND - Connecting to SMTP server smtp.virginmedia.com on port 465
16/04/24, 23:04:47: SEND - Initiating TLS handshake
!16/04/24, 23:04:47: SEND - Server reports TLS error: Handshake failure.

I've tried protocol logging, but as the initial handshake fails there is nothing to log.

As requested in a couple of the other threads, here's a curl report:

C:\xxx>curl -v smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com
* Trying 84.116.6.19:465...
* Connected to smtp.virginmedia.com (84.116.6.19) port 465 (#0)
* schannel: disabled automatic use of client certificate
< 220 csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP server ready
> EHLO xxx
< 250-csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services hello [MOD EDIT: Personal information], pleased to meet you
< 250-HELP
< 250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
< 250-SIZE 52000000
< 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
< 250-PIPELINING
< 250-8BITMIME
< 250 OK
> HELP
< 214-2.0.0 This is csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
214-2.0.0 This is csmtp6-prd-nl1-vmo.edge.unified.services ESMTP service help
< 214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
214-2.0.0 To contact postmaster send email to postmaster@virginmedia.com.
< 214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
214-2.0.0 For local information send email to Postmaster at your site.
< 214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
214 2.0.0 end of HELP info
* Connection #0 to host smtp.virginmedia.com left intact

I haven't made any changes to my mail client settings for years, as appears to be the case with others. I did try a couple of changes, but nothing worked. I would be wary of what appears to be very poor advice being offered via the helpline regarding changing passwords etc as this appears to be an un-notified change in the server.

So, if you have started having problems, please contribute to this thread and we can hopefully get someone at VM to take a look, rather than wait for the customary 2 weeks before the problem mysteriously fixes itself 🙂

[al67]

I'm wondering if the SMTP server is now requiring TLS 1.3 - Older clients like mine only support 1.2 .If this is the case, some notice and impact assessment would have been useful.

Oh, POP still works on ntlworld port 110 with no fancy tricks required, so I don't think SMTP/POP have been dropped in favour of IMAP.

Whatever, the number of threads continues to grow. Might be nice if a superuser/mod could flag this issue 🙂

[techweb]

Still waiting for one of the Virgin team monitoring this forum to give comment to this. We want this resolved and if it can't be resolved, an explanation as to why, what changed and why we weren't notified. 

[inkyhand]

I'm having exactly the same problem, and using windows 7 with Windows Live Mail.

[smithysmoo]

Yes windows 7 and WLM....

[ChrisK]

Same here win 7 Outlook 2010 0X800CCC1A error sending and receiving email since Monday 15th Apr can log onto VM web site and see all emails but it's a pain logging on every few hours just to see email.

[Ashleigh_C]

Hi there @al67 

Thank you so much for your post and welcome back to the forums it's great to have you here. 

We are so sorry that you are experiencing this email issue and thank you again for posting. Can I just check, have you been able to try checking your email settings first online here? 

[Dellilah]

Having the same issues. I have checked and changed the settings and it’s not working. iPad emails are fine but all of my Virgin emails on my ancient laptop running OS X 10.6.8 using Mail no longer work. 

i stupidly tried to change the password on one account thanks to some rubbish advice and had to go through the whole third party email malarkey which has left me in a Kafkaesqueloop of trying to sign in, not being able, having a password reset sent to the aforesaid third party email and then being asked to log in with the original Virgin media ntlworld email. So I cannot do ANYTHING with that email address any more.

Why were  people not informed of these changes? It’s infuriating. 

[al67]

@Ashleigh_C, my settings are fine.Read all of the other threads. Your SMTP server is refusing connections. A lot of investiagtion has been done by those of us suffering, so the ops team have plenty to get started with.

I understand that 'the relevant departments' were notified of the issue on Tuesday. Any updates from them?

[JOHN4370]

Had the same issue since Monday 15th pm... error 0x800ccc1a on a Windows 7 machine using Outlook 2007. I haven't tried it on my Windows 11 machine to verify if it works on that. My gut feeling based on experience and the number of different settings people seem to be experiencing this problem with, and the email clients that are affected, is that this is a MS security certificate issue, not a POP3/SMTP issue or a TLS/SSL issue. As I believe someone has already mentioned somewhere, it could be that the MS certificates necessary for legacy email clients, and possibly Windows 7 itself, have expired. If that is the case then I'm not even certain that new certificates could be issued for software no longer supported but assuming they can be then it would surely have to come from MS themselves. Whatever the issue is I certainly would not advocate changing passwords, POP3/SMTP settings, TLS/SSL settings, port numbers or anything else. It will probably only make the problem worse. This is a problem on the VM side whatever they tell you, whether its of their doing or a MS certificate issue or indeed something else.

I also find it ironic that the verification email from VM that I had to respond to in order to join this forum was delivered to my VM spam folder. Says it all really.

[JOHN4370]

I totally agree Dellilah, it is infuriating. This is as much a communication problem as it is a technical one.

Assuming my gut feeling about this being a security certificate issue is correct, and assuming VM weren't aware of it, then they need a kick up the behind for not being on the ball. If it is a certificate issue and they WERE aware of it, then they still need a kick up the behind for not having a solution in place with either an updated certificate or solution, or a communication to all those who could be potentially be affected that a problem could arise and may or may not be fixable.

Either way they need a kick up the behind.