emails sent not received by recipients

[KenWishae]

Hi there,

I have been recently been made aware that emails sent from my virginmedia.com email account on my desktop [MOD EDIT: Email address removed] @ virginmedia.com to my Scottish brother in laws email account at sky.com on 5 January 2022 and from my wife's desktop virginmedia.com email [MOD EDIT: Email address removed] @ virginmedia.com to her brother in law in USA whose email account is with sbcglobal.net. 

We have used these mail addresses for several years without any problem. In both cases the emails have been recorded in our respective sent boxes on both accounts and in neither case did we receive any non delivery message. Neither email included any other link - they were only text.

In my case I had put a read receipt message request but none was received either and I contacted the recipient who confirmed that he had not received my email.

In the case of my wife's email to her brother in USA this was about a wedding invitation to his daughters wedding and we only found out about non receipt when we phoned him some 10 days later - this was very embarrassing. 

We are not aware at this stage of other potential non receipt of items but I do use my mail address for business mails as part of a charity I am involved in.  Up until Mid December 2021 I am not aware of any non receipt issues.

Have there have been some system upgrades that could have caused problems?

Look forward to an early reply please.

[John_GS]

Hi KenWishae

Thanks for posting. Apologies for the email issues. The two mail addresses we're discussing, are they both linked to an active Virgin Media cable account? If so, can you send test emails to both yours and your Wife's email to see if you can send email and receive it from each other?

Let me know. Best

[KenWishae]

Hi John_GS (Forum Team) we have sent each other test emails me from my desktop and my wife from her iPad.

Both were received OK. 

I don't understand how that will prove anything as the missing / lost emails were to other service providers.

Ken

[BillC45]

@KenWishae 

I think it’s worth pointing out this -

“but I do use my mail address for business mails as part of a charity I am involved in”

VM’s Acceptable Use Policy says that the following is prohibited -

5.2.4. trade or business use of our services, except for remote access to your employer’s corporate network (and remember in any case that we are not liable for any loss occurring as a result of such use).

See - https://www.virginmedia.com/shop/the-legal-stuff/acceptable-use-policy

I’m sure an army of lawyers could expensively debate whether charitable work via email constitutes a business activity or not.

However, regardless of all that, did you by any chance send out a few dozen Seasonal Greetings emails in December? If so, did any of these go via the USA?

Your IP address – which is shared by both you and your wife to send email – may have been picked up by one or more USA-based automatic spam detection services resulting in any email from your IP (self or wife) either being deleted or diverted to the recipients spam folder. Note that both sky.com and spcglobal.net (the latter hosted by AT&T) are USA-resident – and probably apply stricter rules to “foreign” traffic.

[KenWishae]

Hi BillC45, thanks for your comments.

1. My use for business emails for charitable use is considerably over emphasised as they only amounts to less than a handful to another person seeking guidance on an issue. No financial benefit accrues from them.  Your point is taken nevertheless. 

2. No - neither my wife nor I used our emails to send several Seasonal Greetings emails to anyone. The affected non receipts were personal text only emails to relatives - the sky.com one about a holiday we had last year as he is thinking of going to same area, and, as said previously,  the USA one sent in reply to a wedding invite we received via snail mail. Also we do not email photographs in emails - to send these we would use relevant apps on our mobile phones such as What’s App. 

3. I don’t want to go down any blind alleys in this but the affected sky.com recipient only lives 20 miles or so from us in Scotland. Also, is virginmedia.com address always seen as being UK resident by other providers because I can’t use my desktop to buy UK lottery tickets as my desktop is seen as being located outside UK.  Is this even relevant?

4. I saw on the forum that some others also experienced non receipts with sky.com emails hence my original comment asking if any system changes could have caused this issue at virginmedia.

[BillC45 · Accepted solution]

If there was a general problem with traffic between Sky.com and VM addresses, I would expect to see dozens of posts on the subject, not just the odd one or two.

Whilst waiting here for a further response from VM I suggest you send a test email to the Sky address relative – allow a few hours for delivery - and then telephone him to check points (a) to (d) below –

(a) that he only uses one address and that is the one you sent it to

(b) whether it arrived in his Inbox or not

(c) whether he uses any email filters, say, to delete incoming spam

(d) is it in his spam folder?

and finally

(e) ask him to send an email to you.

PS

I have no problem logging-in to The National Lottery site and buying tickets using a credit card. 

[KenWishae]

Hi BillC45, I have sent test emails to both persons to see if they reply. 

Re Lottery account I can get in to it if I switch off my Norton Secure VPM even though I have the VPM set up to show current region as UK and Northern Ireland. I turned the VPM off before I sent the above test emails - could it be interfering with he traffic?

To answer part of your questions these persons have used the same email address for several years now and we didn't experience any issues before.

Will let you know the outcome.

[BillC45]

I should have guessed there was a VPN in the picture!!!

You say it is Norton Secure VPN, so, here is a recent review of that product. I suggest you digest it -

https://restoreprivacy.com/vpn/reviews/norton-secure-vpn/

I would be unimpressed with the review’s UK download speed of 7.7 MBPS.

You should be aware that emails sent via VPN take on the IP address of the VPN and carry traffic for multiple users at the same time – not just yours. The downside of that is that your email could be flagged as spam to the receiving system if the VPN IP address is on a “spam list”.

I’ll bet your emails sent with the VPN switched off arrive without any problem.

When did you install the VPN?

[KenWishae]

Hi BillC45, 

Did as you requested.

My brother in law also has an account with gmail in addition to the one with sky.com.  My test email was received at his gmail address but NOT at his sky.com address. 

He sent test emails back to me but I only received the one from his gmail account. 

He uses Avast for usual security threats but nothing to stop emails. 

Therefore seems to be an issue in getting from virginmedia.com to sky.com.

[KenWishae]

I installed the VPN some months ago when I received a Norton upgrade.