topic missing emails in Email

missing emails

Jallan626 — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 14:24:46 GMT

Just recently several emails have failed to appear in my inbox or on webmail these have account activation mails from Gov.uk so not scam types.

What is going off here.

Re: missing emails

edrandall — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 08:15:58 GMT

Partly because I have my own domain and have PlusNet configured to receive and forward messages on to a gmail accounts for individual family members, I've had this kind of email malfunction lately, I believe it's related to SPF / DMARC configuration.

If this sounds like you:
1. Check your catch-all mailbox at https://webmail.plus.net/
I rarely visit this because it's always just spam but recently started to receive some important stuff.
(same login as your broadband username, I think)

2. Spam filtering
Under portal > Manage account > Manage my mail > Spam
Check the level of aggression of the spam filter.
Turn if off altogether for a trial period if you want to be sure.

3. Only applicable if you have your own domainname and send/receive through plusnet servers
Make sure that you've requested plusnet to configure SPF records (portal > Manage account > Manage your domains)
Add additional DNS record (advanced):

999999

please-add-spf-records

4. In the end I discovered that doing this email forwarding to Gmail through Plusnet was still breaking the SPF/DMARC because something in the chanin there isn't doing the mail headers quite right, so Google sees a failure and marks almost every incoming message as probable spam. I moved my domain registrar to Namecheap and set up the email forwarding using their basic DNS, their servers are configured correctly for this and all my issues went away.
Too complicated to post on here but H2H if you need more details, just ask.

Re: missing emails

Townman — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 10:22:11 GMT

@Jallan626

The above "advice" is largely not relevant to your issue; most of it relates to INBOUND emails. The advice discussing OUTBOUND email issues is only applicable where the user is sending emails using their own domain name. You are not sending emails, your issue is receiving them.

The implication that *.gov.uk sourced email is being blocked by the Cloudmark spam prevention service is of deep concern. Rather than disabling the spam filtering as suggested above, you should first try adding gov.uk to the WHITELIST.

I would double check that there is no typo error in the email address you entered - I've typed the address wrong un-noticed too many times ... and spent ages looking for a mail failure issue. FIW I have just received my road tax payment confirmation email this morning from @dvla.gov.uk

@bobpullen - is there any possibility of someone looking at the filter logs please? Also a question of clarification on the whitelist filter: would adding "gov.uk" cover "dvla.gov.uk", "dwp.gov.uk", "hmrc.gov.uk" etc., or would they each needed to be added as distinct domains?

Moderator's note:
Addressee correcteted.

Re: missing emails

bobpullen — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 09:48:17 GMT

@Townman wrote:

@bobpullen - is there any possibility of someone looking at the filter logs please? Also a question of clarification on the whitelist filter: would adding "gov.uk" cover "dvla.gov.uk", "dwp.gov.uk", "hmrc.gov.uk" etc., or would they each needed to be added as distinct domains?

If I'm reading things correctly, there has been somewhere in the region of 40k gov.uk emails successfully delivered to mailboxes this week. In contrast about 4k have been rejected, which isn't necessarily suggestive of a problem as there are legitimate reasons for rejection e.g. spoofed sender addresses or mail destined for mailboxes that are over quota.

I have checked for evidence of gov.uk rejections to the .co.uk contact address associated with @Jallan626's account and connot see anything from the last 7 days.

I don't know the answer to the whitelist question off the top of my head, although I'm inclined to say that each subdomain would need entering.

Re: missing emails

Townman — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 10:04:40 GMT

@bobpullen - many thanks, especially for the stats ... and additional hints on the rejections.

@Jallan626 - you did not mention which email brand you are using - and I foolishly assumed that it is native Plusnet, not considering it might be one of the acquired legacy brands.

The Plusnet brands do not reject emails when the 1GB FUP is exceeded, those accounts just become exposed to the archiving policy. Most of the legacy brands have a hard utilisation cap of 250mB after which further inbound emails are rejected.