Problems with email?

Problems with email? This set of slides are intended to be a self help guide to help you identify where a problem may exist with email. Email sometimes cannot be sent of received for a variety of reasons. While this guide cannot claim to cover all eventualities it may help in establishing what the problem is and how to get around it. http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

YOU ME Your mail server My mail server Mail Client Mail Client Mail Server DNS Service Mail Server DNS Service PC/ Device PC/ Device Hosting Hosting Router Router Your local Network My local Network Internet Internet Internet DSLAM DSLAM Message direction Local Access Network Local Access Network BT/ Talk Talk Service Provider Access Network BT/ Talk Talk Service Provider Access Network And this is the over simplified view. An error may exist anywhere in this path including the white area which is “the internet” http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

It’s all a bit complicated….. • Yes, it is but you can do somethings to try to figure out whether the problem is in an area where you and I have control or whether it is a problem on the internet or at the senders end. • Because I use this system everyday, I am generally aware if there are any issues so do check http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk first. If there is a problem I am likely to be investigating it before you are aware of it. I will put the latest info on the news page. • Service providers may occasionally screw something up on their systems. Notably Talk-Talk have had various outages since their systems were hacked in 2015. At various times we have not been able to send mails to TalkTalk, AOL, Tiscali.co.uk, Opaltelecom and others in the talk-talk group. The problem is at their end. They are blocking incoming mail, and according to talk talk users outgoing mail as well. If you find yourself in this situation let me know, but use an alternative address if you can as a short term fix. Especially if mail works everywhere else. http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Problems (1) Receiving Mail • I did not receive the mail from fred@his-email-address.co.uk • Reasons why you may not have received it: • He never sent it • He got your address wrong • It is in your spam box, or has been filtered by your mail client or mailbox • His domain name is blacklisted and cannot send • His domain name is blacklisted and your domain cannot receive • His mail did not come from the domain “his-email-address.co.uk and may have been detected as a “spoofed” (aka someone pretending to be someone else) email account • Your mail box is full and cannot accept any more emails • He has sent more emails than he is allowed to send per hour • His domain name has a poor reputation • The settings for his domain name are incorrect • There is a routing problem on the internet • Your server is not working • His server is not working • His Service Provider has a fault in the hosting • Your Service Provider has a fault in your hosting http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Problems (2) Cannot Send Mail • I could not send an email to fred@his-email-address.co.uk • You never sent it • You got his address wrong • You did send it and it is in his spam box, or has been filtered by his mail software • Your domain name is blacklisted and cannot send • Your domain name is blacklisted and your domain cannot send • His mail box is full and cannot accept any more emails • You have sent more emails than you are allowed to send per hour • Your domain name has a poor reputation • The settings for your domain name are incorrect • There is a routing problem on the internet • Your server is not working • His server is not working • His Service Provider has a fault in the hosting • Your Service Provider has a fault in your hosting http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Mail normally works ok…… • But as you may guess there are many reasons why it may fail. 99.99% of the time it works rather like a utility. • SPAM • Various studies have shown that the majority of mail (around 70%+ which is conservative) is spam. Hosting companies and their servers are independently monitored as spam sources and are blacklisted if they are found to be sending spam. • There are various methods employed by receiving mail systems to identify if the message really came from where it claimed to be sent, and if a problem is found the message can be blocked, so you will never receive it • Most of the reasons why mail does not get sent or received successfully is due to spam detection and monitoring. • This type of blocking is done at the server level and is based on an IP address. • There is another level of filtering based on reputation of the sender or receiver. http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

The importance of error messages • Normally if an email is blocked you get a message back to tell you it has been blocked. The messages are often very cryptic. • If you get one of these send it to me, I will tell you what it says, if it is something to do with the server at our end, I will take this up with technical support. • If the person sending a message to you gets an error message, ask them to send it to you through a different email address, then pass it to me. • With no error message there is little I can do to diagnose where the problem is, as you may guess it can get very complicated. http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Self Help Diagnosis Guide The following is split into two guides, one is “I have not received one or more messages”, the other is “I cannot send one or more messages”. The steps link to pages with tests on them that you can perform to locate where the problem is. If you follow these steps and get to a “Contact Me” step then get in touch it is probably a problem with our hosting somewhere, then I can follow it up. Do send me any error messages you receive. http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

I have not received one or more mails The following pages will give you some steps you can take to help to resolve the issue http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Checking the receive path • Follow the sequence below. • Check your spam box (go to test) • Use a backchannel (go to test) • Check that your server mailbox is not full (go to test) • Carry out an MX Record check for your domain (go to test) • Send a message to yourself to check the send and receive path. (go to test) • Run a blacklist check on your domain, and then on the senders domain (go to test) • Check your domain reputation and the senders domain reputation (go to test) • If these all work ok the problem is nothing to do with your end. Ask the sender to use an alternative email address. • If one of these fails contact me and pass me the error message. • Next steps http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

I cannot send one or more mails The following pages will give you some steps you can take to help to resolve the issue http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Checking the Send path • Follow the sequence below. • Check your website is still present (go to test) • Have you sent a lot of emails over the past hour? (go to test) • Carry out an MX Record check for your domain (go to test) • Send a message to yourself to check the send and receive path. (go to test) • Use a backchannel (go to test) • Run a blacklist check on your domain, and then on the senders domain (go to test) • Check your domain reputation and the senders domain reputation (go to test) • If these all work ok the problem is nothing to do with your end. Ask the sender to use an alternative email address. • If one of these fails contact me and pass me the error message. http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

This completes the tests If you go beyond this point the tests are listed in the following slides. http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Check your website is still active • Hosting (email and website) generally has a better than 99.99% uptime although this is not guaranteed. • However 0.01% is still a period of time. It is actually 8.76 hours per year where the service may be undergoing maintenance. • The simplest way to rule this out is to check if your website is still online. Go to your website address and cycle through say 5-6 pages and refresh your browser. • If the website is responsive and not delayed by long periods (30 seconds) then it may be something to do with the website and hosting. But…. Do bear in mind it can also be your broadband service provider who may be performing maintenance so do check that too. • Return to the previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Talk to Yourself • Test A: • Send a mail from your email address to your email address. This tests the receive and send path from your computer/ device to the server and back again. • Test B: • Send a mail from your account to another address you manage that has nothing to do with your domain name. For example gmail, yahoo mail or Hotmail. When you see it in your account send it back. Confirm you receive it. • This tests the ability to send and receive mails from another domain. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Using a backchannel • It is always advisable to have “spare” email address that is running on Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail. This is not a normal in use email account and not one you would use all of the time. • However it is immensely valuable having an independent method or sending and receiving emails and attachments. • Ask the sender to send the mail to the backchannel address and confirm whether you can receive it. If you receive it then there is something wrong at the hosting (maybe legitimate such as it was stopped because the sending server is a spam source). • If the person cannot send to your independent address then the problem is likely to be at the senders end. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Blacklist Check • Go to http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/tools/blacklist-check and enter your domain name in the box and press enter. • It will check your domain name (and server IP address) against a long list of Blacklist monitors. • If the result comes back all green (not listed) then the server you are on has not been blacklisted. • If it has been blacklisted let me know ASAP. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Mx Record check • For mail to be sent to your mailserver the sending server needs to know where it should go. The information is held in an MX record. Check that you still have an MX record for your domain by going to here: • http://www.mxtoolbox.com and enter your domain name in the space provided and then press enter. If you see something come back then you are ok. If you see the message no mx record. Then let me know. • If you are checking a destination mail box that is not working enter the destination domain in this box and see what it comes back with, this will show you if you have made an error somewhere. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Email Address Check • Is the mail address real, you can generally check it by going to here: • http://mailtester.com/ enter the email address of the person you are trying to send to • It will return with two pieces of information, it will validate that the domain exists, and it will validate if the email account exists. • With some systems the email addresses will remain hidden, so you cannot tell. If you are in any doubt call the person to verify the email address. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Domain Reputation • Many larger organisations, particularly local government as well as national government will employ systems that check “the reputation” of a domain name. They are all different and the one below is just one example. • Go Barracudacentral.org and check the look up reputation of your domain or your senders domain. • http://www.barracudacentral.org/lookups/ • You will generally see a neutral response and the text will be in green. If it is red, copy the text and pass it to me, I will take this up with the relevant hosting company. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Bulk Email • The type of hosting your site is in is called shared hosting. It is not designed to support large volumes of emails being sent, if you need to do that you should seek a specialist bulk email provider. • Your hosting generally supports 250 sent emails an hour. So one mail going to 3 people and cc’ed to 3 people counts as 6 emails. • For those of you with newsletters, these are constrained to send out around 100 per hour, and will wait an hour before sending more. So these are deliberately controlled to not exceed the sent mails per hour parameter. • If you have sent too many, the mail will be delayed and an error message is normally provided to the sender. • Remember that if you are on the receiving end, it may be the sending end that has this problem. So ask the sender to check. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Check your spam box / settings • Different people have different settings, some have aggressive settings and some have no settings whatsoever. • Check your mail client. Did the message go into the junk mail folder? • Have you blacklisted the domain the message came from? • Are you filtering on key words to block messages? • I cannot help you here, you need to check your local settings in your mail application, (Outlook, Thunderbird, MacMailetc) and make sure nothing in there is hiding the mail. • Most cases of lost mail is because it has been directed to the spam folder. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Is your (server) inbox full? • Your email should be set up so that mail comes into the server on the Internet and then you download it when you access mail through Outlook, Thunderbird or other mail applications. This is called a POP3 mail account. • If you are using IMAP, or are accessing mail through the web, you need to make sure your mail box is not full. Most mailboxes have a finite setting. If you do not empty them they will fill up and then you cannot receive any mail. • The sender will receive a mailbox full message. • To resolve this go into the webmail location for your mailbox and clear out any junk mail that is sitting there. Or ask your administrator to check your mailbox using cPanel. • Also review your email policy. If you are using POP3 and you are downloading and deleting mail locally this should be all automatic. If it not working correctly then it needs to be checked. • Return to previous slide http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

cPanel Check • The administrator that is looking after the website will be able to do this for you. • Login to cPanel and check the mail boxes. Are any full? If they are they will be shown as red (not necessarily full but approaching critical or full). • Delete any mail stuck in the email box, and have a general clear out. • Mail should be picked up at least once a week and the mailbox emptied. The final resting place for all mail is in your email client application. • Return receive path tests http://www.wingrove-services.co.uk

Problems with email?