topic Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email in Email

pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 21:31:25 GMT

since 2000 hrs two separate PCs reporting authorisation failure on attempting to read mailbox,

confirmed with curl -v pop3://mail.free-online.co.uk -u myusername

also imap and smtp

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

Dan_the_Van — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:00:10 GMT

.co.uk is only used for email address
it is .net for the servers

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:04:24 GMT

Thank you Dan_the_van but same response:

curl -v pop3://mail.free-online.net -u myusername

'''

< -ERR [AUTH] Authentication failed.
* Closing connection
curl: (67) Login denied

I have made no changes to either email system and I could send and receive fine this morning.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

Dan_the_Van — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:07:49 GMT

Have you tried the full email address rather than myusername?

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:18:45 GMT

do you mean curl -v pop3://mail.free-online.net -u myusername.free-online.co.uk

or curl -v pop3://mail.free-online.co.uk -u myusername.free-online.co.uk

both fail.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

Dan_the_Van — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:28:17 GMT

my free-online email address is
myusername@myusername.free-online.co.uk
or for a second email address
myemail@myusename.free-online.co.uk
last post for me now, night

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:36:11 GMT

Thanks very much for your input. Bye.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 06:56:05 GMT

@jeffh

Are you sure you're not in the process of migrating to Greenby?

Yon can test your setting using the instructions here

https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/Diagnosing-email-server-connectivity-issues-the-guide/td-p/2007952

Also details the required settings.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 07:56:12 GMT

Hi Dan

Thank you for the link. That is the guide I have been following to compose curl commands. It does not mention Greenby specifically. My last notification about Greenby was 3 months ago, and it was just a general warning that we would be transferred eventually.I'm really puzzled by this, I have changed nothing at my end. I will call plusnet when the lines open.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

Dan_the_Van — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 08:20:28 GMT

I've never used POP3, I did the curl tests for POP3 earlier it do work for all my free-online accounts

have you checked webmail https://webmail.plus.net/ to check the username/password pair work?

Are you on or off plusnet network?

Does nslookup resolve the emails servers to

Name: mail.freeonline.enmail.co
Address: 91.204.208.193

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 08:21:44 GMT

I'm on the phone to support right now. They say it's affecting other users and thy are raising a ticket with back office.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

FridayFeeling — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 09:41:57 GMT

This thread sounds like the problem my parents are having with logging onto retrieve their "free-online" mail. Thunderbird fails to log in, and nor can they any longer log into the webmail portal with the usual credentials. They phoned yesterday evening to raise a ticket.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

SilverE — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 09:47:14 GMT

See my post on the "Plusnet email moving to Greenby" thread. Greenby require the full email address of the mailbox you are trying to log into

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

FridayFeeling — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 10:14:55 GMT

I've just spoken with my parents, and the last notification they received was that their transition would happen after 24th November (i.e. not yet). They've had no further communication, nor any information to indicate that tweaked login details (i.e. full address) would be required once migrated. So at the moment all a bit of a mystery at our end.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

plusnettony — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 13:13:32 GMT

@FridayFeeling Can you PM me their username please and I'll take up these two cases and see if we can find any issues. Thanks

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:50:03 GMT

Well, it turned out that Greenby had sent me the notification email then migrated me a matter of hours later before I had a chance to see it. Nice to give me a bit of notice, folks. Thanks to Keiran on the support desk for talking me through the login process, I can now get webmail (on firefox but not on Palemoon).

The bad news is I cannot get access through POP3. Plusnet have washed their hands of this, as far as they are concerned it's down to Greenby support who, unlike Plusnet, do not advertise a telephone number for support. The Greenby email knowledge base has signs that it needs updating. I have posted a ticket at Greenby asking for the correct curl pop3: string to test access and I will let you folks know of the outcome.

Cheers, Jeff

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

SilverE — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 22:36:38 GMT

I'm getting POP3 on free-online OK. But despite what we have been told, we now have to log in with the primary mailbox address and not the old username. Originally the mailbox would have been username@username.free-online.co.uk but the mailbox name might have been changed - I'd changed mine to catchall@ and that took a while to work out.

As you found, I had no warning of the migration until it was done. Some people seem to have had a 30 day warning but not here.

But as it's all pretty useless (no TLS connections, having to set up aliases to send from and they still don't work etc. etc.) I'll be going elsewhere. I raised a couple of tickets on these issues, told the AI bot to send them to a real person, but they've been closed with no reply.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

Townman — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 23:46:38 GMT

The correct cURL strings are as per the email server connection diagnostics … however there are some issues with the Greenby setup in secondary mailboxes with POP3 operation.

Try account+mailbox.

Re: pop3 authorisation failure on free-online email

jeffh — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 06:41:52 GMT

Thanks SilverE for your hint, sorted but no help from the greenby ai bot whatsoever. Underwhelmed, I am. Here's my solution:

You need to register at greenby.com. Plusnet will talk you through that. You will have a username and generate a new password that eventually conforms to their (unpublished) complexity rules. This password is not used for email, ignore it for subsequent operations. Once you have jumped through these hoops you should be able to access webmail from the greenby page. You will find two mailboxes already set up. one will be postmaster@myaccount.free-online.co.uk. Ignore this too. Look at the other one, which might be plusnet@myaccount.free-online.co.uk. That is the one that you need. Now try

curl -v pop3://mail.free-online.net -u plusnet@myaccount.free-online.co.uk:mypassword

use the password that you have been using before the switch to greenby. If you are lucky you'll get a list of numbers from your mailbox. If not, sorry I did my best. Then for thunderbird etc you need exactly these credentials, i.e. change username from myaccount to plusnet@myaccount.free-online.co.uk and leave the password as it was.

SMTP, ports 567 (none) and 465 (SSL/TLS) worked for me. User was set to myaccount.free-online.co.uk

Good luck.