Email crisis!

M

Merlin

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Hi all,

I am currently experiencing a really strange email problem.

I have a POP email account, through my own domain, which is hosted overseas. Two friends of mine also have email accounts on my server, and so far, haven't had any issues; or haven't picked it up.

I've had numerous people contact me, not via email, to tell me that they've either not received expected emails from me or that they have not received expected emails from me.

No side has experienced bounced emails.

Whilst all of this has been going on, I do still get external email; genuine and Spam.

I tried sending a raft of emails to my own address from a webmail service. I did NOT get all of them.

My host is not being very helpful, Google isn't doing much for me and I'm stressing...largely because I'm in the midst of trying to find work and I now know that lots of emails, to and fro, are going missing.

I would really appreciate any help offered.
 
Check for blacklisting with this tool :

mxtoolbox.com

It can also be that your host is not forthcoming wrt problems and issues on their side. It can also be that somebody else have obtained your POP3 credentials, and is now downloading (and deleting) your emails.

Remember, POP3 don't duplicate/keep emails on the server, it deletes emails on the server after downloading them. (unless you change the settings on your email client, but most clients delete emails after a successful POP by default).
 
Last edited:
Also check to make sure your mails are not sitting in the outbox
but my money is on the blacklisting
 
Hi T_L,

My host has gone from excellent to pi55-poor, IMO.

mxtoolbox shows all Green for a Blacklist check.

I'm confident that my account & password are secure. I am still getting some external email, and the usual Spam; and some people are still getting mail from me.

My client is set to remove new emails from the POP server.

All emails sent show up in Sent items and if I send to a webmail account, they do seem to get through. Obviously I can't send hundreds of test emails though. :(

I have no email anti-virus software meddling with the system either.

This is such an odd problem. :(

Thanks for the suggestions.
 
The_Librarian said:
I think it's a second POP3 client somewhere...
Click to expand...

How do you figure that? Mail he is sending out is not reaching the recipients, another device downloading his incoming mail wont inhibit the sending of mail from his mail client?
 
Some mail gets through, some not.

I have now changed my account's password and am sending out a batch of test emails again.

I haven't been able to pick up any patterns in which emails get through, in or out.
 
psion said:
How do you figure that? Mail he is sending out is not reaching the recipients, another device downloading his incoming mail wont inhibit the sending of mail from his mail client?
Click to expand...

Because he states :

Merlin said:
I tried sending a raft of emails to my own address from a webmail service. I did NOT get all of them.
Click to expand...

Something is intercepting, or removing, the emails. I'm inclined to think POP client somewhere.

But this :

Merlin said:
I've had numerous people contact me, not via email, to tell me that they've either not received expected emails from me or that they have not received expected emails from me.
Click to expand...

can also be a blacklisting problem - but this is now ruled out.

Very weird problem!

Then it must be the host.

@OP - is it possible to move the domain/services to another host?
 
Get the mail logs from the server it will tell you exactly what is happening with those messages.
 
Moving hosts isn't an option at this stage.

I tried sending emails to a webmail account again, and one from it back to my POP address:

Both included the To address as CC and BCC copies. Only one copy of each of these made it...which is probably correct for a server setup, I'm assuming?

Then I sent a second email from each, in which I placed typical Spam-like keywords into the Subject line. Neither of these made it to or from my POP account.

I think there is a hidden anti-Spam setting on the server. I've disabled everything, but I think that I'm missing something or that the host has an additional anti-Spam measure in play, which is set far too strictly.

There are no links in cPanel to mail logs...any idea on where to look, please?

Thank you.
 
Merlin said:
Moving hosts isn't an option at this stage.

I tried sending emails to a webmail account again, and one from it back to my POP address:

Both included the To address as CC and BCC copies. Only one copy of each of these made it...which is probably correct for a server setup, I'm assuming?

Then I sent a second email from each, in which I placed typical Spam-like keywords into the Subject line. Neither of these made it to or from my POP account.

I think there is a hidden anti-Spam setting on the server. I've disabled everything, but I think that I'm missing something or that the host has an additional anti-Spam measure in play, which is set far too strictly.

There are no links in cPanel to mail logs...any idea on where to look, please?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

Email quota?
Who is the host? We'll be able to provide our own experiences to solve the problem as well.
 
Hi nand,

When you create email accounts in cPanel, you need to specify the maximum allowable size of the mail account. It can either set to 'Infinity' or a set number of Mb. This is the quota.

justhost.com is the host.
 
Hi gfmalan,

I do have a domain name...and a hosting contract paid up for quite some time to come. ;)

I'm also not really in a position to even think about tinkering with my hosting setup for at least a month...or three.
 
Ok, thats bad, Hetzner in SA is cheap and it just work!
With all these linux servers, there is a nice logfile of mail sent and received etc. if you can get your hands on that.
You can also telnet your own server and look at the responses. On telnet as well as the logfile, then you can figure out whats the issue.
I guess you don't know how they do spam scanning and removal?! Because you can set that to just drop the mails looking like spam with no NDR

I cant remember your answer, but you did scan your domain name for blacklistings? And did you do a dns revers lookup?
 
Hi gfmalan,

I'll see what I can find on the server this afternoon. :)

I've disabled every anti-Spam feature that I could find in cPanel, but I suspect that they are still processing it somewhere along the line...

I was quite annoyed when I logged into cPanel and discovered that all mails detected as Spam were now being deleted without confirmation. :( I don't log in to cPanel that often, which is why I hadn't seen this new feature before.

No Blacklisting detected.

Reverse DNS does route to the justhost servers.
 
Merlin said:
I was quite annoyed when I logged into cPanel and discovered that all mails detected as Spam were now being deleted without confirmation. :( I don't log in to cPanel that often, which is why I hadn't seen this new feature before.
Click to expand...

Now that's not good news... hope that was the problem!
 
T_L,

No, that hasn't solved the problem. I dread to think of what's been lost as a result of it though.

I've just walked in the door, so I haven't had a chance to look for any mail logs, yet.
 
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