Cannot send plusnet mail from mobile (gmail)

[#1]

Hi,

I cannot send emails from my plusnet account using gmail on my mobile when using anything other than my plusnet WiFi network at home. I can RECEIVE OK! (using imap)

Messages end up queued (in Outbox) for ever until I turn on WiFi at home.

This is true of Orange (my carrier) and for instance O2 WiFi amongst others.

Additionally, when not on WiFi I have tried to check my sending credentials are set correctly:

SMTP Server - relay.plus.net

Port - 587

Secutity Type - None

Sign In - required

Username - <correctly entered>

Authentication - <password correct>

I receive an error message - Problem with account setup, Your username or password is incorrect. (which, of course they aren’t)

If I change nothing, and switch on WiFi, the credentials are fine!

My belief is that my credentials are being 'corrupted' somehow, but I cannot figure out exactly how.

I would like to fix this problem and would welcome any help please.

John

[#2]

I suspect Orange could be blocking insecure access to third party mail relays. You could try sending via the Google (secure) relay.

[#3]

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@barcud wrote:

I cannot send emails from my plusnet account using gmail on my mobile when using anything other than my plusnet WiFi network at home. I can RECEIVE OK! (using imap)

Is it a paid Plusnet account John, or a free non-subscription account?

[#4]

Bob,

My plusnet email account  is non-paid for now, but was my PlusNet paid account when I lived in Hemel Hempstead up to about 6 years ago.

I now live in Oswestry where my wife and I use a different plusnet account.

[#5]

Thanks spraxyt, I've had a look at how it would work and it looks very interesting.

I shall investigate a little more and give it a try,

[#6]

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@barcud wrote:

Bob,

My plusnet email account  is non-paid for now, but was my PlusNet paid account when I lived in Hemel Hempstead up to about 6 years ago.

I now live in Oswestry where my wife and I use a different plusnet account.

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I think Bob's question has led to the problem being identified. The Plusnet relays do not support authentication using free accounts. This means sending emails will work only from your home connection. However if email is available on the Plusnet connection you are now using those credentials could be used to authenticate your free email.

Nevertheless I suggest continuing to investigate use of the gmail relays.

[#7]

Thanks David,

So I have two options to persue:

1 Use the alternative Plusnet account credentials.  Not sure how to approach that one. How does it work?

2 Use Gmail relay.

Tried gmail relay from my phone Google nexus 4 using gmail app)

Using recommendations from googling, I set user name and password to gmail settings, invoked SSL/TLS Port 587 and received error username or password incorrect.

On one try I used port 465 and I think this was the one that gmail reported as " Someone just tried to sign in to your Google Account xxxxxxxx@gmail.com from an app that doesn't meet modern security standards. " 

Funny that as it was gmail.

Not sure where to go from here. Any ideas?

[#8 · Accepted solution]

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@barcud wrote:

So I have two options to persue:

1 Use the alternative Plusnet account credentials.  Not sure how to approach that one. How does it work?

2 Use Gmail relay.

<snipped>

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Let's assume your account username is myaccount with password mypassword; and the alternative account username is altusername with password altpassword.

You know how to set up authentication using the myaccount/mypassword combination. But this doesn't work because it relates to a free account. Simply change myaccount to altaccount and mypassword to altpassword. Save the settings and it should work because altaccount is paid for.

It doesn't matter if the sender details are for a different account as long as the sender email address is valid.

For testing purposes make sure you are not on your home connection.

[#9]

David, Thanks,

I've simply changed the credentials on my Gmail app for my non-paid for Plusnet account and it validated OK.

A test message sent (all via 'EE' I should add) was delivered as expected.

Frankly, I expected the plusnet relay to complain that the credentials did not apply to the email account, but, no, nothing.

Thanks again!

[#10]

I'm glad to hear that fixed it John.

Thanks for marking my post as the fix.