Virgin Media Community

[jaberwok]

Thunderbird v78.7.0 ; "Login to server smtp.virginmedia.com with username xxxxxx failed."

For the past few weeks, sending an email usually fails in the morning but "retry" succeeds on the same day in the afternoon/evening.

I created a tbird.bat file as suggested elsewhere in the forum and part of the log file is as follows -

[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: I/SMTP SMTP Response: 525 5.7.13 Authentication Denied (VM321)
[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: I/SMTP SMTP entering state: 18
[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: D/SMTP SMTP Login response, code 525
[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: D/SMTP marking auth method 0x200 failed
[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: D/SMTP SMTP auth: server caps 0x20330, pref 0x300, failed 0x200, avail caps 0x100

[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: I/SMTP SMTP Send: AUTH LOGIN
[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: I/SMTP SMTP connection dropped after 257 total bytes read
[(null) 4320: Main Thread]: D/SMTP SMTP Login response, code 525

All settings are as suggested and turning on/off VPN and anti-virus makes no difference.

Any ideas?

[coenoby · Accepted solution]

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@jaberwok wrote:

 SMTP SMTP Response: 525 5.7.13 Authentication Denied (VM321)
Any ideas?

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Yes. VM321 is an error message unique to Virgin Media.
Personally, I do not have access to their code tables  but the "Very Insightful Persons" (formerly known as "Superusers") on this forum do.

Here is a link to one of a number of posts where this error has come up in the past:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/SMTP-server-authentication-denied-VM321/m-p/4183718 

There you will see that Graham_A (one of the VIP's) explains that VM321 indicates that access to the email account account has been blocked temporarily due to too many invalid authorisation attempts in a short period of time.

The advice is always to wait a couple of hours and try again but do check out Graham's post for further suggestions.

Coenoby

[jaberwok]

Thanks. I wonder what "too many invalid authorisation attempts" actually means.

[coenoby]

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@jaberwok wrote:

Thanks. I wonder what "too many invalid authorisation attempts" actually means.

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I could not say.

Worst case - it could mean that someone somewhere is repeatedly trying to access your email account by guessing at your password.

Or possibly there is another underlying reason why Thunderbird cannot access your account successfully and you are then making repeated unsuccessful attempts to access the account thereby tripping VM's security system.

But no doubt there are other scenarios.

Coenoby