topic Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days in Email

Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 11:24:44 GMT

Hi,

Email forwarding of my Talktalk.net emails has not been working for the past few days. I have logged into Webmail and it is still set up to forward, but nothing is coming thru.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Gondola — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 11:39:28 GMT

Email forwarding using the auto forward option is not to be relied upon. The recipient email service can reject mail that is not fully authenticated. So if the original sender does not allow any mail service to send on mail other than the ones it authenticates then the forwarded mail will not be fully authenticated.

If your TalkTalk Mail service is limited to webmail only access then auto forwarding will cease to work.

The workaround in both cases is to collect your TalkTalk Mail by signing in to webmail.

If your mailbox is fully functional then you can use a mail collection service like Gmail's POP3 collection or an email client to collect your mail from the TalkTalk Inbox.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 11:53:55 GMT

Thanks Gondola for the reply.

So are you saying forwarding from Webmail will no longer work after it's been working fine for years?

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Gondola — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 12:35:39 GMT

In the circumstances I've described mail auto forwarding is not to be relied upon. Gmail, for example have increased their rejections of unauthenticated mail. It therefore depends on the SPF file set by the originator of the mail and whether that's set to allow any mail service to send or auto forward their mail or whether the originating mail service have also ramped up their security so that only the originating mail service is a permitted sender.

If you were auto forwarding a TalkTalk Mail domain then that would work. Let me know the originating domain and I'll look at the SPF file - assuming it's only some email that fails to auto forward. If it's all email that fails to auto forward then either that's a fault or your mailbox is limited to webmail only access.

Webmail only access happens if your mailbox is not linked to an active customer MyAccount or a lapsed MailPlus subscription or for other security reasons. Let me know if any of those are possibilities.

Have you been notified that your mailbox is already migrated to the new OX Cloud 8 Mail platform - I ask just in case it's a fault associated with that migration.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 13:04:15 GMT

I've had an email entitled 'We're improving your TalkTalk Mail experience' but it didn't mention 'the new OX Cloud 8 Mail platform' (whatever that is).

It's just strange that all email forwarding has stopped as of perhaps a week ago, say 16th August.

I don't really follow what you are saying otherwise (even though I work in IT - ha!) but I've sent test emails from my Talktalk account that I use with pop3 and they've appeared in both my Webmail and in my pop3 account, but not in the account that I forward mail to. Note, I forward mail to Yahoo and also to my work email address.

Note too, I am a Talktalk account holder, so my Webmail should be linked to a valid customer account.

Please let me know what other information you need for the mail forwarding to be fixed - thanks 🙂

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Gondola — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 13:37:49 GMT

TalkTalk Mail is on the Open-Xchange (OX) mail platform. The imminent migration is to the Open-Xchange Cloud 8 mail platform hence why I refer to the OX Cloud 8 mail platform.

I've also received notification that two of my three mailboxes are scheduled for migration. I've just carried out a test of auto-forwarding from TalkTalk Mail from the test-mail@talktalk.net auto responder and that was auto forwarded to Yahoo Mail. So, in my case that proves auto-forwarding is working so far as TalkTalk Mail domains are concerned. I am also receiving into Yahoo Mail the Community notifications. Those do not permit sending by TalkTalk Mail senders so the SPF check at Yahoo fails because TalkTalk Mail is not a permitted sender (auto-forwarder). But because the Community notification mail message is digitally signed via DKIM so Yahoo Mail accepts the mail as genuine and it arrives in my Yahoo mailbox inbox.

So far as I can see all is working exactly as expected between TalkTalk Mail and Yahoo Mail.

I cannot tell without knowing the domain(s) that are failing for you to know whether this is an SPF and DKIM fail when the mail arrives at Yahoo Mail or an auto-forwarding fault.

Try composing a test message from your TalkTalk mailbox to test-mail@talktalk.net to see if the auto response is forwarded to and accepted by Yahoo Mail.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 14:27:18 GMT

So, I've sent test emails to test-mail@talktalk.net as you suggested. I sent one from my Talktalk account using Thunderbird and one from my wife's, again using Thunderbird. My account emails should get forwarded to my work email address and my wife's emails should get forwarded to the Yahoo.co.uk mail account. The emails have both appeared in the inbox on our home email (Thunderbird), but neither one has been forwarded.

What does this tell us and what other tests can I do to get to the bottom of it?

Thanks 🙂

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Gondola — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 15:44:34 GMT

You're now saying that there are two TalkTalk Mail mailboxes that are not auto forwarding the auto-response mail messages that will be fully authenticated for sending via the TalkTalk outgoing SMTP servers.

As you can use Thunderbird to connect to both of your mailboxes then neither of the mailboxes are limited to webmail only access so auto-forwarding should also be enabled for both.

This same 'fault' condition suggests there may be a common factor affecting both mailboxes. Is there a problem sending mail direct from Thunderbird to either your wife's Yahoo Mail account or your work mail account? If these direct mail messages were being rejected then that would suggest your public IP address is on a spam blacklist. Don't use a work VPN or other public VPN that may be hosted overseas as the IP addresses for VPN's do often get blacklisted because of their use by spammers.

Put the two email addresses in your Community profile, personal information, private notes and I'll ask TalkTalk to check the config settings in relation to auto-forwarding. This is to double-check that auto-forwarding hasn't just been disabled as part of the migration process. My auto-forward is working exactly as expected though.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 15:54:18 GMT

I have successfully sent mail directly from my Talktalk account to my work email account and from my wife's Talktalk account to the Yahoo mail account, both using Thunderbird. Both emails reached their destination very quickly.

I don't use VPN.

I will add the email addresses to my profile for you to check.

Thanks 🙂

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Ady-TalkTalk — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 11:58:42 GMT

Auto Forwarding should not be affected by migration of mailboxes. Mail should work as normal. No issues have yet been called out with the process.

Ady

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 13:40:07 GMT

Thanks for the reply, Ady.

What could the issue be then - why hasn't any email been auto-forwarded from the 5 Talktalk email accounts my family has since August 15th/16th?

Thanks

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Ady-TalkTalk — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 06:33:26 GMT

Have you deleted and readded the forward?

Ady

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 09:39:19 GMT

Yep, tried that, but it made no difference

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Andrew103 — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 08:37:42 GMT

Exactly the same thing happening to me - auto-forwarding of emails not working since the migration of my emails from the legacy system. I am certain the issue we are facing is down to the migration.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

juststeve1 — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 09:02:41 GMT

What date were the mailboxes migrated, do you know? Thx

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Andrew103 — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 09:18:59 GMT

Auto-forward emails were working until 17 August, then nothing since (when it appears the migration was done). I have tried turning off and turning back on the auto forward, but still nothing. Have also tried changing the domain email address the auto forward is set to (I have previously had it set to yahoo but have also tried gmail) but still nothing comes through. This issue has to be due to the migration.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Gondola — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 09:42:41 GMT

Hi juststeve1

I've just carried out some further tests on mailboxes migrated and not migrated. The not migrated mailboxes have auto-forwarding working into both Yahoo Mail and Gmail. The migrated mailboxes do not have auto forward working despite the mailbox indicating that auto forwarding is active.

So, my diagnosis has changed and I now think that someone has just forgotten to connect up the outgoing SMTP server for the migrated mailboxes on the OX Cloud 8 platform. But whatever the issue it clearly requires the Email team at TalkTalk / Open-Xchange to investigate further.

Standard forward from the TalkTalk mailbox works ok. Mail collection from the TalkTalk mailbox works ok. My recommendation is always to collect mail and not rely on auto forwarding because auto forwarding of mail messages cannot be relied upon for all messages. But there is obviously an issue for TalkTalk to fix.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Andrew103 — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:37:14 GMT

There continues to be a problem with auto forwarding of mails, since the mailbox migration from the legacy system. In the last couple of days only about a quarter of mails in the TalkTalk email box were forwarded, whereas prior to the migration on the legacy system almost all mails were successfully auto forwarded. I trust this issue will soon be resolved by the TalkTalk team.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Gondola — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 09:28:53 GMT

I'll have another look and test. But if you're confirming that some mail is being auto forwarded then the outgoing SMTP servers must be connected to the sieve server backend.

Re: Email forwarding not working for past few days

Gondola — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 10:51:42 GMT

I've had a look at auto forwarding and can see that it's nominally working. i.e. the IMAP backend from the sieve server is sending outgoing mail to the TalkTalk SMTP servers for onward delivery.

I'm checking using the email notifications from TalkTalk Community that arrive from the Khoros mail servers and forwarding to BT Internet Mail. At BT the auto forwarded mail fails SPF but passes DKIM and DMARC policy checks.

So far three of four mail messages have been accepted from the auto forward.