topic pop3 authentication failures in Email

pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 13:38:53 GMT

Yesterday evening and all morning today I've been having "Login to server mail.plus.net with username <accountname> failed." in Thunderbird. It was working fine before yesterday. Is it broken for everyone, or just me?

This is the email account associated with my main plusnet broadband account, with plusnet registered domain, webspace, CGI, database, the works. I don't believe this account has been migrated yet. (I have had a force9 and another plusnet email account successfully migrated, those seem to be working fine.)

I can login as normal to the plusnet member centre and can still see my email settings there.

I can't login to https://webmail.plus.net/ - that gives me "login denied".

I can't login to https://greenby.com/ - that gives me "Account details not recognised, please try again."

Full pop3s curl diagnostics (well, redacted) are attached, but the end result is...

< -ERR [AUTH] Authentication failed.
* Closing connection 0
* TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS alert, close notify (256):
curl: (67) Login denied

This diag has previously worked fine, most recently last Saturday (when I was having to resolve SMTP send failures, like lots of other people!)

One point to note is that my password (randomly generated, ages ago) contains both hash and ampersand symbols. I vaguely remember posts here a while ago about passwords with odd characters not working with Greenby?

Could it be that I've been migrated, but Greenby doesn't like my password? (The "welcome to Greenby" email would be going to this email account, that I can't currently access....)

Could my email account credentials have been "locked out" or disabled in some way?

I know I am using the correct password, otherwise I wouldn't be able to login to the plusnet member centre.

I don't really want to be messing around changing the password if is it just a transitory login problem (changing password on the broadband account and router always feels scary with potential for being locked out!) but then if I have been migrated and a password change is required for Greenby, I'm not sure that's something I can change without logging into the Greenby first? ...

Any ideas please anybody?

Re: pop3 authentication failures

PhilipHeyes — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:29:44 GMT

mail.plus.net has been working yesterday and earlier today.

but as I look at it right now my two accounts and my wife's account are throwing up the MS Outlook credentials window
when trying to connect via mail.plus.net

I'm going to sit on my hands as this we have seen before.

[edit] Just tried via https://webmail.greenby.com/ where Login failed

Re: pop3 authentication failures

Davidspeers — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:28:31 GMT

Yep, it's having its usual rest.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

pvmb — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:37:04 GMT

@Davidspeers

"Yep, it's having its usual rest."

Instead of resting, I rather suspect it is preoccupied, working hard on moving the remaining 'edge cases'. 🙂

Re: pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:39:10 GMT

@pvmb wrote:

Instead of resting, I rather suspect it is preoccupied, working hard on moving the remaining 'edge cases'. 🙂

"This is the email account associated with my main plusnet broadband account, with plusnet registered domain, webspace, CGI, database, the works." - I feel like an "edge case"...

Re: pop3 authentication failures

blairatholl — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:40:03 GMT

Thanks goodness it's not just me. Having been prevented from sending emails this morning (see post), but resolved this early afternoon with advice from this forum, it was depressing to find I couldn't send or receive any email this late afternoon. I thought: is it me or is it Friday? I see: it's Friday. Have they all gone home to avoid the M27 rush hour jams? Or swung into massive action to do a chunk more migration over the weekend? A chin-stroke h'mmm.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

pvmb — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:53:53 GMT

@adflyer

"I can't login to https://greenby.com/ - that gives me "Account details not recognised, please try again."

That implies that either your email account has yet to be moved to Greenby (being denied access at the Plusnet webmail portal seems to imply something else) - or your login credentials for Greenby Roundcube webmail are incorrect.

Despite what it says(!), to log in to the Greenby portal you need to use your Plusnet Username and Plusnet Password. To log in to the Greenby Roundcube webmail site you need to use your full Plusnet email address and Plusnet password.

N.B. There is however a current problem with being able to log in to the Greenby mail servers - see above.

Also, I cannot currently log in to the Plusnet email web portal either (now attached to Greenby servers?)

Re: pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:49:24 GMT

@blairatholl wrote:

Have they all gone home to avoid the M27 rush hour jams?

Point of interest, I used to work in the building that Greenby / Enix now occupy at 16-18 Barnes Wallis Road, Segensworth East (https://greenby.com/info/terms) - yea, the M27 was rarely fun...

Re: pop3 authentication failures

dave — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:52:42 GMT

We've got an incident logged and we've replicated here on migrated accounts. Our none-migrated accounts seem to be OK.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

redsox9 — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:53:25 GMT

Greenby wobbly again, probably weighed down by the increased demand on its limited server resources as it migrates more Plusnet clients.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

plusnettony — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:55:00 GMT

They are looking into a current incident.

Why the other issue lasted since yesterday, I'm not sure.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

plusnettony — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:09:37 GMT

Incident resolved by the way, if anyone is still having issues, we'll look at it case by case.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

Davidspeers — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:10:19 GMT

All good. Thanks.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:16:49 GMT

@plusnettony wrote:

Incident resolved by the way, if anyone is still having issues, we'll look at it case by case.

I'm still getting "login denied" on this email account, I can now login on other migrated force9 and plusnet accounts though.

Is it possible to tell if this account has been migrated please, so it could be a genuine authentication/password issue?

Was it perhaps migrated yesterday and that's when the failures started?

Re: pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 07:24:15 GMT

I still can't access this email account this morning either.

@plusnettony or @dave (or anyone) would you be able to have a look please? Has it been migrated, does the problem lie with Plusnet or Greenby?

I appreciate it's Saturday so nothing might happen until Monday, but being locked out of my main email is problematic to me not least because of sites that rely on emailed login codes etc...

Re: pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:19:57 GMT

I called Plusnet customer services. Steve was very helpful. There's no indication that this account has been migrated, or migration is in progress, so the problem appears to be with PlusNet, not Greenby.

He suggested:

try a different device - no different, login denied on https://webmail.plus.net/
try mobile data, external to plusnet broadband - login denied on https://webmail.plus.net/
try basic webmail (squirrelmail) - "ERROR: ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server. Query: LOGOUT" - which is a different error, but the gist is the same 🙂
"toggling" password - setting it to a temporary password, try login (still login denied on webmail and auth failure on pop3s), then set password back to original again (same auth failures)
I tried the "I don’t know my login details" on Greenby, but no code was received on my mobile, which also suggests the account hasn't been migrated yet.

I know the password I'm using is correct as I'm logging in to the member centre with it

I've raised a ticket at Greenby, on a different migrated account that I can login to - "someone will reply via email during normal working hours" - not confident they'll be able to do anything from a different account though?

I don't know what else I can do / try?

(I've changed the contact email on my plusnet account so that it's not this account that I can't access!)

Re: pop3 authentication failures

Townman — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 07:16:56 GMT

Migrated or not, the issue is (was) problem a Greenby service issue. ALL email server connections route via the Greenby proxy servers.

Re: pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 07:35:30 GMT

@Townman wrote:

Migrated or not, the issue is (was) problem a Greenby service issue. ALL email server connections route via the Greenby proxy servers.

Unfortunately, my issue is still very much an "is" issue! I hope it's not going to be much longer before it turns into a "was" issue though... (not least because I'm expecting car insurance renewal any day now, and I don't really want that going missing, or not be able to access it online. Functioning email is "business critical" to some people. I hope Plusnet can quickly re-confirm my faith in them 🙂)

I'm hoping that once access to my mailbox resumes there's going to be a ton of mail (mostly spam!) waiting for me... After speaking with Customer services on Saturday, I'm now worried that my lack of access is due to my mailbox "disappearing", rather than just an access issue. If it has "disappeared" then I suspect any email received since Thursday has ended up in /dev/null rather than my mailbox. That would be "far from ideal" 😢

Re: pop3 authentication failures

plusnettony — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:28:40 GMT

Just to confirm, is this the default mailbox? All looks OK with that. I've clicked in and can see how many messages are waiting.

Do the test mailboxes work?

This account (the one I'm looking at) hasn't migrated yet,

Re: pop3 authentication failures

adflyer — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 13:41:48 GMT

@plusnettony wrote:

Just to confirm, is this the default mailbox? All looks OK with that. I've clicked in and can see how many messages are waiting.

Do the test mailboxes work?

This account (the one I'm looking at) hasn't migrated yet,

@plusnettony Thanks for looking into this. I've sent you a private message. Thanks 🙂