Proposed closure of plus.com email accounts

[#1]

On Monday 9th January 2023, I spoke to a Plusnet customer adviser about a problem I had regarding deleted emails on Webmail. Surprise, surprise, he had no idea!

He then stated that Plusnet will be closing down all email accounts ending in plus.com, within a couple of months time. He asked whether I'd had notice about this from Plusnet, to which I replied NO - with great disgust!

I cannot find any information to support this statement, so has anyone else heard about this?

If true, when will Plusnet be advising their customers and will they be providing advice on switching to another account e.g Yahoo; Gmail; Outlook, etc?

[#2]

You cannot find any information on this because no such decision has actually been made about the future of the email service.

As with a few matters, some support staff get things all too wrong.

Certainly Plusnet have withdrawn...

• Access to email for new customers
• Access to email for departing customers who do have email

[#3]

Dear Townman

Many thanks for your super-quick reply.

For that customer advisor to make false statements is tantamount to incompetence, so should be reprimanded, particularly as it has caused me unnecessary worry.

However, I will still need to contact Plusnet customer service again, in the hope that they may be able to explain why all my Webmail messages have been deleted, even though I've only been using Outlook to access emails. I'll see what mis-information I receive this time, assuming they have any clue as to what I'm talking about!

Once again, thank you for the information you supplied, which is much appreciated.

Regards

[#4]

Before contacting Plusnet review your Outlook configuration. If it has been set up as a POP3 client then by default it will remove emails from the mail server. If you want to access the mailbox from several devices then set Outlook up as IMAP client.

If it has been set up as an IMAP client, deleting emails in outlook deletes them on the server as well.

[#5]

I've just checked the Account Settings, which confirms that Outlook is set to IMAP/SMTP.

However, the third and fourth sentence in your reply is rather confusing. Are you saying that if Outlook has been set to either POP3 or IMAP, then all emails will be deleted from Webmail if they have been previously accessed via Outlook? If that's the case, then this is a no-win situation. Never had this problem with my old computer running Windows 7.

[#6]

I hope they keep their SMTP server available for outgoing mail. Many mail services treat mail from private IPs as spam.

[#7]

@micromorgan 

With POP3 messages are downloaded from the server and stored on the local computer. Email clients normally default to delete these messages from the server at the same time (depending on the email client used to download them this can be changed). They are only deleted from your local computer if you choose to separately delete them.

With IMAP the message remains on the server, it is not downloaded. All mailboxes, that is your local PC, the server and any other devices you choose to see your emails are synchronised and mirrored on them all. With this configuration if you delete a message on any one of the devices it is no longer ‘visible’(in truth they are moved to the deleted items folder) on any of them.

[#8]

Thanks for your explanation, which for a non-tech savvy, I roughly understand it. However, EVERYTHING on my Plusnet Webmail account is being deleted, with nothing shown anywhere. Guess I'll now try to get an explanation from their tech department. It's a shame that Plusnet don't have an email address, as I find it easier to put issues in words, rather than trying to explain over the 'phone to a non-tech adviser.

[#9]

That probably means that one client connected to the mailbox is POP3 and is down loading and deleting the email.

If you do not believe that any of your clients are configured as POP3 the change the mailbox password URGENTLY!

This is a trick / technique applied to compromised email accounts - set up a POP3 client to steal all of the emails. Seen this happen to a mate last week. Still picking up the bits with him.

[#10]

Yes how many clients do you have accessing your e-mail?
Mainly probably how many devices or how many e-mail applications you use.

I guess in this day and age we all have at least two, one computer and our mobile as well.

[#11]

After doing more investigations tonight, I may have found a clash with account types.

I am currently using just one client (device) which is my new desktop PC, running Windows10. Email is via Outlook IMAP/SMTP

My old desktop PC, running Windows 7, uses Windows Live Mail 2011 for email and is set up as Incoming POP3 and outgoing SMTP. I have used this PC recently to transfer emails, by forwarding them to the new PC using a Wi-Fi USB dongle. 

Tonight I checked my Plusnet Webmail account and found a few messages remaining in the deleted items folder, but they are no older than 10 days, which is about the last time I accessed saved emails from the old Live Mail account. Perhaps these two types of set-up could be the cause of the problem?

I have been using the POP3 account for many years and have never had a problem with either Live Mail or Webmail, as they have been operating independently, with no loss of messages. The transfer of all required emails from the old system to the new has now been completed, so I'll check Webmail again in a few weeks time, to see if items in the deleted folder remain.

Many thanks to you and the other contributors, who took time to respond to my request for advice. More than I got from Plusnet!

[#12]

Alex

Thanks for your message.

I'm only using one device (desktop PC), but please see the response I've just sent to Townman, which may explain more.

[#13]

The behaviour of a POP3 client can be confusing. By default POP3 downloads and removes email from the server whilst IMAP is synchronised with the server, leaving the mail still there visible to other IMAP clients such as web mail.

POP3 can.be fudged to leave mail on the server … but that can be complicated by the delete option on the client. I would suspect that the transfer of the old computer has resulted in that POP3 client removing stuff from the server.

Invariably if one does not know precisely what one is doing with a POP3 client in the mix, it’s bad jams and invariably ends in tears. Done application having its own mind about deleting stuff on the server removes control from the user.

With using IMAP clients exclusively, stuff only gets deleted or moved by explicit user action.