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Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out

Oldjim
Resting Legend
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Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out

Having, somewhat belatedly, realised that I need to separate my account login and associated router password from my email passwords I need a little help

I have a number of email accounts in the form username+mailboxname and these I would assume can be changed as they presently using the account login password but to avoid major disruption I would want to use the account login password specifically for each mailbox so that when I change the account login password they will still work
Can I do this

Now there is another mailbox which I have never used which is username@username.plus.com which appears under Mailboxes but not under Summary and is shown as Default
What is the reason for this as it can't be edited or removed

Note that I have a mailbox postmaster@username.plus.com for Plusnet emails

7 REPLIES 7
spraxyt
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Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out


@Oldjim wrote:

I have a number of email accounts in the form username+mailboxname and these I would assume can be changed as they presently using the account login password but to avoid major disruption I would want to use the account login password specifically for each mailbox so that when I change the account login password they will still work
Can I do this

All mailboxes apart from the default one have their own passwords. These passwords were individually set in Manage My Mail (MMM) and can be individually changed in MMM. If they are the same string as the account/username password that's because they were individually set that way. If the account/username password is changed this will have no effect on these mailbox passords.

Now there is another mailbox which I have never used which is username@username.plus.com which appears under Mailboxes but not under Summary and is shown as Default
What is the reason for this as it can't be edited or removed.

When Oldjim and myself were somewhat younger models, when we created our first email address it was username@username.plus.com and was designated the default. To access it we used just username - but to be pedantic it was the username after the '@'. The password was the account password and changing the account password also changed the default mailbox email password. This default mailbox will be listed first in the mailbox tab, and should also be first in the summary tab. Additional addresses (mailboxes, aliases and redirects) are listed in alphanumeric order.

Later the first (default) mailbox name became firstname@username.plus.com; now users are asked to choose a name when they first enter MMM. However this mailbox is accessed using just username and the account password.

We can rename the default mailboxname to anything we like, but we can't delete it. However we can choose another mailbox as default and after doing that we can delete what was the previous default if we want to (provided it isn't designated as catch all).

Note that I have a mailbox postmaster@username.plus.com for Plusnet emails


postmaster@username.plus.com is the legal contact address and has to exist. However it needn't be a mailbox, it can be an alias of another mailbox, eg the default one. Or postmaster could be made the default mailbox which would allow username to be deleted.

David
Townman
Superuser
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Registered: ‎22-08-2007

Re: Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out

Hi Jim,

The default email address password 'follows' the account password. Change the account password and that impacts your portal login, connection password in the router and the default mailbox password.

Other username+mailbox passwords can be set individually using the edit option with manage email.

Cannot help but feel I might have misunderstood your question as this feels like telling you how to such eggs around here!

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out

Re Granny and eggs - Spraxyt answered that one

It appears I can change all the mailbox passwords individually to be the same string as the account password and then changing the account password will have no effect on those.
But if I change the account password before changing the individual passwords to the account password then the change will muck up all the email passwords

re the default one

This default mailbox will be listed first in the mailbox tab, and should also be first in the summary tab.

In the Summary Tab - after looking carefully this is what I see

2017-09-11_145150.jpg

But if I change to View by Type it changes from @ to username@ - most odd

spraxyt
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Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out


@Oldjim wrote:

It appears I can change all the mailbox passwords individually to be the same string as the account password and then changing the account password will have no effect on those.

Yes, that's correct.

But if I change the account password before changing the individual passwords to the account password then the change will muck up all the email passwords


No, this isn't the case the individual mailbox password still remain unchanged. There is no physical connection between account passwords and non-default mailbox passwords even if the password strings happen to be identical.

David
Oldjim
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Re: Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out

I seem to remember that you didn't need to setup a password for an individual email account and then it automatically used the account password - or am I wrong

spraxyt
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Posts: 10,063
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Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out

I don't recall it being like that, though you could be right. At least I now understand the background to your question. And taking that "option" into account I don't know the answer.

My guess is that once extra mailbox passwords are set subsequently changing the account password will have no effect on these passwords. But on the other hand it might ...

The way forward depends on whether you want to take the risk. I know when I change my account password it affects only the default mailbox password, none of the others.

David
Oldjim
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Posts: 38,460
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Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Email passwords and account password - trying to sort out

It does make things more clear - I will go through all the email accounts and change the password manually to the account password and only then change the account password