More email problems - again!!

[jbraner]

Hi,

My mailbox is being locked again. I change the password and it works for a few minutes, then I can't access it again.

This is beyond a joke. My computer is clean - it is VM that is locking the account because some SPAM is getting through.

Is there anyone from VM monitoring these threads? I can't bear to try the phone support and the bot is useless - and says it's too busy.

This is about the 4th time this has happened in the past couple of months. Usually it goes away after the password change (for a while anyway) but now it only works for a few minutes.

My wife uses this account (I know better than to use a VM mailbox) and she doesn't know how to fix this stuff.

Can someone make this stop?

[用心棒]

Whilst waiting for the forum team to respond are you able to share the (redacted) error message shown when you cannot connect?

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[jbraner]

On my Windows PC, using outlook - it's just the normal "cannot connect to server".

On the iphone, it says "server not responding" "verify that you have entered the correct account information".

Everything is correct - the email account is locked. I can go change the password and it will work for 5 minutes and then it will be locked again.

[用心棒]

It would be helpful to see what, if any, VM error code is returned by the SMTP server in this situation. Either for:

Windows
Open a Command Shell and enter the following where username:password is replaced with your email address and password, i.e. richard.branson@virginmedia.com:Y54kpX5g:

curl -sv smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com -u username:password 2>&1 | findstr "214 VM"

BSD, Linux, MacOS, etc.
Open a Terminal and enter the following where username:password is replaced with your email address and password, i.e. richard.branson@virginmedia.com:Y54kpX5g:

curl -sv smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com -u username:password 2>&1 | grep "214\\|VM" 

Post just the VM error code returned here or that authentication succeeded, for example, result of unsuccessful authentication would return something similar to:

< 535 5.7.8 Authentication Credentials Invalid (VM300)

whereas success would return::

⋮
214-2.0.0 This is cmsmtp ESMTP service help
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 end of HELP info

 Should you choose to post more than the requested result information redact it first.

[jbraner]

Hi,

It doesn't do anything.

My Outlook client uses smtp.blueyonder.co.uk rather than virginmedia.com - but I tried both.

There is no reply

[jbraner]

OK - it doesn't like the | findstr "214 VM" part - because it's not there.

Here's what I got when I leave that off

[jbraner]

Well, it looks like you can't post the screenshots here either (sigh)

it says

* Trying 212.54.56.53:465...
* Connected to smtp.blueyonder.co.uk (212.54.56.53) port 465 (#0)
* schannel: disabled automatic use of client certificate
* schannel: next InitializeSecurityContext failed: Unknown error (0x80092012) - The revocation function was unable to check revocation for the certificate.
* Closing connection 0

[用心棒]

Images were rejected because your email address was not redacted.

A secure connection cannot be established with the SMTP server because its revocation status cannot be validated. The forum team would be best placed to investigate this issue futher.

Are you able to access webmail; if not what error message is shown?

[jbraner]

aah, OK - I just redacted the password 😉

Webmail says:

Sorry!

Your mailbox is not available at the moment.

Please retry again in one hour and make sure you are using the correct password to access your email from all of your devices.

If the problem continues, please call our team for help on 150 from a Virgin Media phone or mobile, or 0345 454 1111 from any other phone and select option 2. For details about how much it costs to call our team from a Virgin Media home phone, visit virginmedia.com/callcosts. Call costs from other networks and mobiles vary.

[jbraner]

I left the email address in, in case anyone from VM looked in - so they'd know where to look.

If no one joins in here - I'm going to have to phone up and spend ages trying to get the fixed 😕