Intermittent failures to log into email - "Credentials needed"

[#1]

Hi, several times a day I am getting notifications from Gmail on my tablet that my login credentials are needed. If I delete the notification and try again I usually get my emails.

Similar thing is happening on my PC with Thunderbird - when I first start it up it says "sending of password did not succeed. Mailserver mail.free-online.net responded Connection Negotiation Failure." Usually I just click Retry and it works.

Its as if you have multiple email servers and my login credentials are missing from one of them. This has been happening for a few weeks now.

How can I go about getting this fixed?

[#2]

Thanks for your post @RobAllen

I'm sorry to see you're having issues with your emails.

Do you have them setup as POP3 or IMAP on both of your devices or a combination of one or the other? 

Also, are you able to send and receive mail fine at webmail.plus.net?

[#3]

I am using POP3 on both devices. I have noticed that when my login is refused for any extended amount of time I am also unable to login to any Plusnet service for the duration. Any attempt to reset my password comes back with an unknown/invalid user ID. It usually starts working again after a few minutes, but it has taken several hours on one occasion.

[#4]

Hmm. Do you have the same issues when you're not connected onto your Plusnet broadband connection? For example if you have a mobile phone with data on, could you see if that works?

[#5]

The details provided sound like connectivity time out errors.  Unfortunately all failures - arising from whatever cause - tend to get reported as "password" errors by email applications, which is totally unhelpful.

Connectivity timeout errors can arise within the connecting network or the services being connected to.  The email mail servers can be sluggish, but that seems to have been significantly mitigated since the recent email outages.  You can add further mitigation in this space by increasing the server time out duration (see server settings) to two minutes.

If time outs are occurring to other resources** as well as email, then I would look at your network stability - wifi and the broadband.  At the time email reports a "password" error, check connectivity to other resources, such as Google.  From time to time, I see email sync issues AND web pages being inaccessible, whilst all is actually fine in respect of the internet connection.  The issue lasts briefly (less than the time it would take for a re-sync) and at the moment, I am putting that down to local wifi interference.

**From time to time, MS Edge reports no internet connection on a page refresh ... and then immediately (on  another refresh) displays the page OK.

[#6]

I don't actually have a mobile phone - strange I know. Whenever I experience this issue everything else continues to work fine i.e. my internet connection doesn't seem to be the issue. From my position it seems to be limited to my Plusnet login only.

[#7]

I am permanently online to work during the day and experience no interruption to that connection when the problem happens.

I can be watching a YouTube video when the problem happens with no interruption to the stream.

I don't experience any other internet issues when this happens, it is only with my ability to login to email and the Plusnet website.

Changing the timeout doesn't appear to be an option with the android Gmail application.

While this usually fixes itself in a few minutes it sometimes lasts for hours, but it is just email login nothing else.

This all started about 3-4 weeks ago, before that there was never any problem.

[#8]

Thanks a lot for getting back to us @RobAllen

I'm really sorry to hear that you're still having issues. I've refreshed both the mailbox and portal login components on our side to see if this makes a difference. Give it a couple of days or so and let us know how you get on.

[#9]

I've given this about three weeks now and there is still little difference. Many times a day I get notifications across all my devices (PC, android tablet, phone) that "correct credentials" are required. Connection is still eventually made and my emails are refreshed.

[#10]

If your chosen email client does not facilitate the adjustment of the server timeout, then you might be stuck with the issues which arise from such inflexibility.

Periodically timeouts might be encountered and they will present as a credentials error by undiscerning email clients.

[#11]

Hmm, this feels like something of a non-answer.

Thunderbird on my PC does not have anything on the server settings page to let me adjust the server timeout, and I've not seen any such option on the android email apps either. Maybe you could suggest other email applications that do not have this limitation?

Given that this was working fine up until recently, something must have changed. I know I have not touched either Thunderbird or my android devices, something else must have changed. I'd just like to know what that is so that I can address this annoying problem.

[#12]

Not a non-answer at all, but quite factual.

Outlook has this ability and so does Thunderbird - see How to change the server timeouts in Outlook or Thunderbird? - Databáze řešení - HostingBay

There are a lot of references to the Gmail app failing to send ... when nothing apparent has changed at the user end.  Found this with a quick Google search - GMail Has Stopped Sending Emails via my external SMTP server - Gmail Community (google.com)