Yet Another Greenby e-mail/webspace Issue

[#1]

My main PN A/C has apparently just been migrated to Greenby.

I can see that all incoming mail has been arriving via Greenby since late in the day on 28/01/2026 and have spent all day trying to sort the bl**dy mess out

HOWEVER, outgoing mail is still being sent via PN relay 212.159.9.107

It would appear that a DNS error currently exists just like the ftp DNS errors existed following previous F9 A/C migrations.

Authentication is consequently, shall we say, somewhat confusing/difficult/impossible due to mailbox tweaks made at the Greenby end prior to finding out relay.plus.net hadn't actually been updated to the Greenby server(s).

I also note that non-authenticated SMTP via PN is often problematic due to some AVAS-out servers being exceedingly cranky in respect of rejecting test messages due to alleged attempts to send junk mail !

In addition, webspace for this A/C has definitely NOT been migrated correctly. This is 100% apparent because, amongst various other things, it still works. All sites migrated to Greenby are 100% broken due to known Apache server configuration issues. There is no web hosting product visible in the Greenby portal, only an email product.

HOWEVER, what Greenby do appear to have done is to migrate all my username.plus.com website data to my username.force9.co.uk A/C instead thus merging two somewhat similar sets of website data and making a complete mess of everything by over-writing various important files etc that were quite specific to each site

So thank you PN/Greenby. I'm now going to be up all f**king night because I have absolutely no choice but to delete everything from the username.force9.co.uk Greenby server and upload the handy backup that, unlike some people, I always have available just in case.

I hate the morons responsible for this so much

[#2]

The Plusnet SMTP configuration is not an error, it’s by design.

For the time being outbound mail will remain via the existing Plusnet relay service.  This is for various complex security and capacity related matters.

[#3]

Unlike the force9 relay servers which did change to Greenby servers immediately after migration ?

This really is a complete abortion isn't it Seemless migration my /a/r/s/e !!!!!

[#4]

Correct.

I believe that the security models are different, certainly the volumes are different.  Routing through the SMTP proxy impacts the Plusnet security / volume characteristics.  You might recall that a switch was attempted August bank holiday weekend … when mayhem erupted.

This would have been seamless if Enix had delivered against the expectations of using a tried and tested platform.

[#5]

Nope, I wasn't aware of any issues around August Bank Holiday. I regret to say that I now only ever come here when I find that I have absolutely no choice but to do so in an attempt to get some stupid problem fixed.

Even I know a lost cause when I see one so any spare time is best spent trying to find ways and means to unfasten the last remaining ties to PN I'm afraid. Although having said that, PN are doing a very good job of that themselves as well aren't they

Guess I'll just have to wait until all my mail goes titsup again if/when they do change relay.plus.net to point to the Greenby servers. Everything will stop working again at some point because the mailboxes and passwords at Greenby are no longer identical to those at PN which are now inaccessible.



Regarding the webspace data screw-up:

Any suggestions for how I get PN to ensure that Greenby do add a web hosting and email product for each and every one of my existing PN and F9 A/Cs ? I have A/Cs which have the same username on plus.com and force9.net so they're fundamentally different. What's happened here is all of the website data for one PN A/C and one F9 A/C has been put in the Greenby F9 A/C leaving the Greenby PN A/C with no hosting product, no DNS and no migrated data. The same scenario applies to another PN A/C yet to be migrated - the same username also exists on F9 and has already been migrated to Greenby. I can live without an action replay of this gross stupidity !

PS: I think you might be needing a large bucket of popcorn for when I've sorted this and can get back to the #500 server error thread

[#6]

Proxies?

Or poxies?

One has to assume that *all* information (down to the last dotted i and crossed t) was provided to Enix in order for them to provide a successful migration.

My experiences are that sometimes this doesn't happen. Therefore I will continue to have to sit on the fence as to where the fault(s) lie until defintive evidence is provided (unlikely, IMO).

[#7]

Oh dear, here we go again. On joining many years ago even I could see the Plusnet freemail system was incredibly clumsy so I didn't bother with it. I found a supplier which has given excellent service to my wife and myself for £3 a month each. If I want to change ISP I can do so anytime without changing my email addy of many years. You get what you pay for and PN mail is free, so what are you moaning about?

[#8]

For those at PN/Greenby or indeed anyone else who doesn't quite 'get' the significance of this apparently incompetent personal/private data handling, just consider this for a moment:

• It is entirely possible that John Smith in Manchester has a Force9 A/C smith<dot>force9.co.uk and email john<at>smith<dot>force9.co.uk

• It is entirely possible that John Smith in London has a Plusnet A/C smith<dot>plus.com and email john<at>smith<dot>plus.com

• Neither John Smith is ever going to be in any way happy if/when they lose access to their personal and private data because PN/Greenby have handed it all over en-masse to their namesake

Please don't try telling me that "this quite simply could not happen" because it is EXACTLY what has happened sometime quite recently. Data from a plus.com A/C has without any doubt whatsoever been added to existing data from a force9.co.uk A/C. The data from two completely unique and totally unrelated A/Cs has been merged. I haven't bothered to check whether files with the same name but different content or date were over-written, skipped or concatenated. It must have been done 'locally' by PN/Greenby as well because the file dates appear to be non-recent and those which I've checked match the file dates on homepages.plus.net and homepages.force9.net as opposed to being a more current date due to having been recently uploaded or moved remotely via ftp.

Best be hoping that there aren't too many more John Smiths around the country who just so happen to have an A/C at metronet, madasafish, free-online, freenetname, johnlewis ...



But, hey-ho, I'm quite sure that PN must have the ICO on speed dial and are probably even on first name terms with them by now having been found with their grubby finger(s) in previous data breach pies



These data transfers are most unlikely to be being done manually. This would rather suggest that there is a badly written and/or untested script somewhere with little to nothing in the way of error/sanity checking. Particular with regards to the potential issue of unrelated duplicate usernames across the wider PN customer userbase. Some bottoms somewhere appear to be very much in need of a jolly good spanking

However, as a consequence of any automation, it is also perhaps quite unlikely that this is a one-off incident. Therefore, if anyone else has experienced losing their personal/private data or indeed gaining someone else's during their allegedly seamless migration from PN to Greenby then please add all relevant details to this thread.

If there are other more significant examples of this level of apparent incompetence in the handling of customers' personal/private data then this is quite clearly another job for ... ICOman ... or ICOwoman as the case may be

[#9]

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@Longliner wrote:

You get what you pay for and PN mail is free, so what are you moaning about?

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F9/PN mail and webspace was NOT a free service as such for many customers. Whilst there were and still are are a good many free-loaders and PN indeed encouraged such activity and they even intentionally stopped charging certain customers, many of us were paying OTT rates for dial-up or BB connectivity INCLUDING static IP, email, webspace, SMTP mail, VOIP, FAX2email, blah, blah, blah.

Those such customers were clearly not only paying for their own service but covering the full costs of the services being provided by PN to an ever increasing number of free-loaders !

There no such thing as a free lunch ... someone ALWAYS has to pay for it in one way or another

As for all the alleged moaning, I'm 'moaning' about yet another f**k-up on services which to all intents and purposes are technically being paid for and which is not only par for the course ... but is also a mere gnats whisker away from being a data breach potentially requiring ICO involvement. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it