on 15-01-2023 12:04
Hi,
I’ve been asked by the Twitter team to post here regarding my issue.
Since September I haven’t been receiving any emails from Facebook or Instagram, as in notifications & password resets. Luckily I was able to remember my passwords, but having the emails being blocked from these two sites is rather concerning.
I did see one post here where you asked a user to contact Facebook to use your server so you could see what was happening, but as you know it’s VERY hard if not impossible to contact Facebook or Instagram for any support. Plus changing my email to something like gmail defeats the reason that your email service to blocking their emails.
Any advice or help would be appreciated.
15-01-2023 16:16 - edited 15-01-2023 16:27
@highroyds wrote:Since September I haven’t been receiving any emails from Facebook or Instagram, as in notifications & password resets.
I presume that you have checked your VM webmail account to ensure that there are no filter rules set up? Hackers have been known to do that to disguise their activity on a hacked email account.
"I did see one post here where you asked a user to contact Facebook to use your server so you could see what was happening,"
Sadly, without information from the sender's side it is almost impossible to discover why the email failed to arrive.
VM do block emails from IP addresses that Spamhaus and other antispam blocklists flag up as senders of spam and they also block emails that fail VM's security checks on incoming email. To determine exactly why and at what stage the problem is occurring the technical team will need information from the sender.
"changing my email to something like gmail defeats the reason that your email service to blocking their emails"
Personally, I would encourage you to reconsider switching to a dedicated email provider as a longer term strategy.
VM stopped issuing new email addresses in May 2022, so new customers have to use a third party (non VM) email account and existing customers can no longer create new additional VM email accounts.
VM have stated that they are continuing to support existing email accounts but clearly email is not high on their list of business priorities going forward.
Coenoby
I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media.
Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks
on 15-01-2023 17:10
I’ve disabled all the filters to double check it wasn’t the cause of the issue, but still no emails.
I have made a gmail account for Facebook today and added it to the Facebook account, surprisingly that email came through to alert me of an account change. But the notifications still didn’t come through.
Thank you for taking the time to look into the situation. I guess I’ll have to change all my accounts over to a gmail account.
on 16-01-2023 09:57
@highroyds wrote:surprisingly that email came through to alert me of an account change.
I am pleased that Gmail seems to be working ok for you.
The fact that the email alerting you to the account change came through ok illustrates the complexity behind what on the surface appears to be a simple email operation. It also explains that the reason emails from, in this case, Facebook fail to arrive is more complex than simply "VM are blocking Facebook.emails".
Behind the scenes, large organisations frequently have a number of different email services or systems each one handling different parts of their business operation. So, putting it simply, in this case the email from Facebook advising you of your account change was probably generated and sent by a different system to the one that sends out notifications. The two services may be configured slightly differently hence why VM accepts emails from one and not the other.
The reason VM apparently "blocks" emails is often down to way in which the email sender has configured the settings in their outgoing email service. I think that VM seem to be very hot on making sure that incoming emails comply with the various security standards while others, such as Gmail, seem less concerned and are happy to overlook any slight issue (That's perhaps an oversimplification and I stress it's just my observation not a statement of fact.)
Sadly, without access to information about the sending email it is very difficult, bordering on impossible, for the VM technical teams to determine exactly why the VM email servers are failing to accept an email.
I have had a Gmail account for years and my experience is that Gmail rarely if ever fails to accept an incoming email. On the other hand they are very good at detecting and flagging spam emails.
VM on the other hand seem much stricter about blocking potentially suspicious emails. However, they are probably not so good at filtering and correctly flagging spam emails, especially when it comes to new types or waves of spam.
By the way, other free email services are available. You might like to check these out https://www.lifewire.com/best-free-email-accounts
Thanks for coming back with that update.
Coenoby
I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media.
Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks
on 17-01-2023 10:10
Hey highroyds, thanks for reaching out on our help forum.
We're sorry to hear of the issues with your FB and Insta emails not coming through, have things improved since you last posted on Sunday and has removing the filters helped with this at all? Also, have you tried to reset your password to a brand new and secure one to see if this resolves the issue?
Let us know where you are with this, we're here to help.
17-01-2023 13:13 - edited 17-01-2023 13:14
I’ve changed my email to gmail for Facebook and that’s working for notifications.
When I did change my email over from ntlworld to gmail, Facebook sent me an email through my ntlworld email to state there was a change on my account. So that worked, but my mother who has an ntlworld email with notifications turned on hasn’t received any emails from Facebook around the same time that mine stopped too. All filter rules and blocks have been disabled to confirm where the issue is.
I gather I will have to make an email for my mother too on gmail, but she would have to notify everyone which is a huge pain.
Edit: btw changing the password on the email account should have no effect on receiving email notifications from Facebook.
on 18-01-2023 13:35
Thank you for that information. To confirm, have you been able to check her spam inbox?
^Martin
on 18-01-2023 13:40
I check the spam & junk box regularly.
on 19-01-2023 13:51
Thanks for replying back, sorry to see your mother has been experiencing the same issue with the email notifications from FB and Instagram lately.
Have you perhaps tried to test this by using another email for these two social networks and see if the notifications arrive as normal there?
Also, would can you advise if you usually access the mailbox via the browser or other (such as client software, eg. outlook)?
Does the same problem appear when logging to the mailbox over a pc browser on this page, just to confirm this?
Please share more and we're here to help.
on 23-01-2023 22:18
The notifications are coming through with gmail, but ntlworld just doesn’t come through unless we add an email to the account.
We’re using not only the webmail app, but also thunderbird with the imap settings.