topic Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning in Email

Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 10:21:34 GMT

Hi - neither Outlook (Windows, POP3) or iOS devices (IMAP) able to retrieve email since this morning.

Webmail fine - can see mail waiting there. dial.pipex.com addresses.

Any ideas?

Thanks

*oh this is annoying - am getting "

Correct the highlighted errors and try again.

Post flooding detected (community received posts of a unique message more than 1 times within 3,600 seconds)"

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 10:26:57 GMT

Update:

Odd - suddenly Outlook did pull down the email (on Windows, POP3) but iOS (IMAP) still not.

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 10:40:33 GMT

Still not out of the woods - authentication failing again on both IMAP and POP3, multiple Pipex addresses

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

KeithFrench — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 10:42:21 GMT

I have asked one of TalkTalk's support to pick your thread up and investigate it for you.

They aim to respond within 48 hours (Monday - Friday) excluding Bank Holidays, but if more urgent you can always try the Service Centre on 0345 172 0088. The posts are responded to in time/date order, oldest first. Please try to avoid posting on here until TalkTalk has responded to you, otherwise, this will just put you further down the queue.

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 11:00:08 GMT

Thanks - by the look of it the issue is server-side so hopefully a fix soon.

It now looks like authentication is working but slowly i.e. sometimes requests get rejected (timeout?) sometimes not. Mail gets delivered sporadically and I am now getting fewer annoying Outlook popups querying auth password.

One thing that is annoying (and TalkTalk are not alone for this) is that the potentially very useful Service Status page - https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Service-Status-Dashboard/bd-p/service - is frequently not updated (it should be saying "Some authentication issues reported - we are investigating")

I visited that page first of all and would have not bothered to post (or - worse - phone) had I read something like that.

Clearly Management have not designated a First Responder to update that page - in otherwords there should have been training along the lines of "once multiple similar posts received in a short period of time regarding a possible problem, staff member X is delegated to update the status page, and then to check in every 30 mins to see if problem has been solved and at that point revert status page"

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 11:42:21 GMT

Update - authentication issues remain at 12.40, frequency of failures increased a little. Wonder if one authentication server playing up? (as sometimes happens with these systems).

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

GEG63 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 13:40:25 GMT

Yes same here with my three dsl.pipex.com addresses downloaded to my Outlook Client. Receiving is OK but Sending either takes ages or times out completely. It worked fine yesterday and prior to that.

Webmail OK.

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 15:27:00 GMT

As it happens mine seemed to have problems logging on to both send/deliver.

Having said that, just tested and stuff went and came down fine, and - touch wood - no popup errors for some time.

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 16:14:56 GMT

Nope - authentication problems back again... (Popups) 5pm Monday

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

gmlack — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 17:06:12 GMT

I'm also seeing occasional failures to authorize.

Tuesday Oct 3rd. Briefly at midday, then the evening from 22:00 to 22:40.
Wednesday Oct 4th 23:12 and 23:43

Thursday Oct 5th 20:30.

Then today (Monday Oct 9th) far more of them. From ~10:00 to 12:30, hen 13:20 to 13:45, ~14:30, then 17:05 (which is still continuing at 18:05).

Note that since I can post this it can;t be my ADSL connexion - as that is clearly working. So something is wrong with the TalkTalk authentication service.

Although I am seeing my modem having to reconnect a few ties each day.

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

Ady-TalkTalk — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 05:44:27 GMT

Hi All, you should have mail working normally again now. Please let us know if not.

Ady

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

ico99 — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 12:56:05 GMT

Thanks, yes now seems fixed.

For future reference (and assuming not due to embarrassing error you'd prefer not to share) what was the cause?

Re: Varied mail clients not able to authenticate, webmail fine - this morning

Ady-TalkTalk — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 13:53:05 GMT

Excellent, thanks for letting us know its sorted.

Ady