topic Re: Free-Online email servers error in Email

Free-Online email servers error

RPMozley — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 05:50:10 GMT

Something or someone has changed the imap.free-online.net and mail.free-online.net dns records to an unknown CNAME and IP. Have we been hacked again?

Both force9 and main plus.net appear not to be affected.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 08:14:12 GMT

I get certificate errors using Outlook 365 and K-9 android app.

Not sure but I think the IP Addresses have changed from 212.n.n.n to

Name: mail.freeonline.enmail.co
Address: 91.204.208.193
Aliases: relay.free-online.net

Name: mail.freeonline.enmail.co
Address: 91.204.208.193
Aliases: imap.free-online.net

Re: Free-Online email servers error

pwberry — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 12:35:02 GMT

Not a techie so I don't know how to look at / adjust these sort of things (DNS, IP etc), all I know is that I can't now connect to a metronet address via Thunderbird or iPhone. Webmail seems unaffected.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

dave — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 13:30:34 GMT

@Dan_the_Van are you still getting errors or is it OK now?

@pwberry can you check your email settings in Thunderbird and your iPhone to see what the username is set to? For Metronet email it needs to be in the format username@metronet.co.uk if it's just username then that's likely the problem. We're making some changes at the moment as @RPMozley has spotted and we've spotted a couple of people that had the username format that way that aren't working but the easiest thing is just to add @metronet.co.uk in your settings and it should spring back to life.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 13:48:02 GMT

@dave

Yes I still see the certificate message, currently the are three emails in the in box, I get three messages

Edit: I use accountname+mailboxname

Re: Free-Online email servers error

OriginalBigBri — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 14:28:34 GMT

I'm getting the same on all my free-online mailboxes.

I also use "accountname+mailbox".

@dave are you suggesting the server settings should be changed from

mail.free-online.net

relay.free-online.net

mail.freeonline.enmail.co

relay.freeonline.enmail.co

Re: Free-Online email servers error

sjpbarker — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:34:27 GMT

I am also having problems with free-online email. I can receive emails but when I try to send one email to one recipient I get this error:

Is this related?

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Personal information removed from a public forum.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

dave — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:21:36 GMT

Apart from @pwberry and anyone else on Metronet using username rather than username@metronet.co.uk there should be no need to change any settings. We're looking at these 2 issues now and should hopefully have it fixed shortly.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

pwberry — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:26:39 GMT

@dave - did just that, and everything now working perfectly 😊
Many thanks for your help - really appreciated!

Re: Free-Online email servers error

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:36:19 GMT

@dave

All good here now 🤔

Name: relay.free-online.net
Addresses: 212.159.9.105
212.159.8.105

Name: imap.free-online.net
Addresses: 217.46.26.25
217.46.26.15
217.46.26.45
217.46.26.35

Re: Free-Online email servers error

OriginalBigBri — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 16:02:30 GMT

@dave all good here also thanks

Re: Free-Online email servers error

sjpbarker — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 16:05:07 GMT

And all is good here also. Thanks!

Re: Free-Online email servers error

GrahamS — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 18:41:29 GMT

I am able to get access to my Metronet web mail using my existing Metronet user name and password.

These are also used to access the account in outlook on pc and on my phone. However since last night I get an incorrect user name or password message when trying get mail on PC or Phone.

I tried on a Linux pc with thunderbird to set up access to the pop3 account but get a message saying “unable to log into server, possibly wrong config, user name or password.”

I have tried with my current user name and the username with @metronet.co.uk appended but get the same message.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

Townman — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 18:54:04 GMT

Have you tried restarting the device?

Re: Free-Online email servers error

GrahamS — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:11:04 GMT

I just tried once more using the modified user name I.e username@metronet.co.uk and this time it worked!

Confirmed on PC outlook account and iPhone.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

dfoss — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 20:33:49 GMT

I am on metronet email on outlook -and had the same problem today - kept asking for password. I tried adding @metronet.co.uk to the user name of my metronet addresses in Outlook tools and got further - through to a message to check my address when I sent a test message - however my test messages then all came down - BUT now when I send an email it uses my plusnet name and says "on behalf of (my metroneet name)- very confusing for my recipientd - what has gone wromg? - is it me or Plusnet

Re: Free-Online email servers error

BruceArden — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 21:21:04 GMT

OK I've got my imap email from metronet.co.uk working again by adding @metronet.co.uk to my login name (thanks).

But sending emails (via smtp.metronet.co.uk:25) gives an error about "too many recipients in past hour". Is this just me?

Re: Free-Online email servers error

dfoss — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 21:34:24 GMT

I got that too

Re: Free-Online email servers error

paulmacd — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:04:46 GMT

Having managed to get incoming mail by changing User Name as advised above, I cannot send emails. Pop-up message "Sending of the message failed. An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded: Authentication required. Please verify that your email address is correct in your account settings and try again."

Very annoying. I'm not a techie and have already wasted about two hours trying to sort this.

Re: Free-Online email servers error

pwberry — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:45:08 GMT

I had the username problem initially (see msg 3ff above), which was sorted, thank you @dave , everything worked fine for a couple of hours but now having trouble again and can't send email, have joined the "too many receipients in the last hour" brigade.