Email Client Access No Longer Works

[RigaMortice]

I'd been successfully operating my talktalk.net email using Outlook 365 until the morning of 21st April when it stopped working with a login failure. It's still failing today.

Initially I assumed it was an Outlook issue but then downloaded a copy of Thunderbird to check and found it fails the same way.

My webmail still works, although it's not great to use.

I'm using the recommended IMAP settings from this page:  Email settings | SMTP, IMAP & POP3 | TalkTalk Help & Support so I hope that page is up-to-date.

I've already had some long conversations with support but all at a fairly superficial level so would appreciate a closer look at my account to see what might be stopping me using Outlook/Thunderbird to access my email.

Thanks

[mandisa1-TT]

We can troubleshoot, however please note it will be basic troubleshooting and cannot guarantee a resolution as we do not have systems to troubleshoot third party APPS. You have also confirmed Webmail works.

[RigaMortice]

Thanks. I may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown...

[mandisa1-TT]

Hey there @RigaMortice We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused to you. However you have mentioned your webmail still works, we would love to assist you however our resources are limited when it comes to Third party APPS. 

[Gliwmaeden2]

Re-escalated in the hope of a response from staff, @RigaMortice.

[RigaMortice]

Why is it that TalkTalk support obfuscates or goes silent when I ask a direct question?

Can someone from TalkTalk support please reply to my question above without including any phrase that means "just use webmail".

To save looking back, here is the same question again - expressly for TalkTalk support:

Can anyone confirm that my email account is correctly linked with my broadband account?

- as far as I'm aware the necessary details are in my community profile.

And if my email and broadband accounts ARE correctly linked then why was @mandisa1-TT unable to locate my account?

(although they didn't specify which account couldn't be located)

[RigaMortice]

@nameunknown advised me to use openssl to check my IMAP email settings, which I did as below:

openssl s_client -connect mail.talktalk.net:993
....gives lots of output, ending:
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 ID UIDPLUS NAMESPACE QUOTA AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN] Ready
- then I try to login with my full email address and password:
a LOGIN xxxxxxx@talktalk.net yyyyyyyyyyyy
- and get this message returned:
a NO [AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed.
- and given that I can see my email address and password in the command in clear text I can see that I'm using the correct credentials.

In an earlier post @mandisa1-TT said this "Just to confirm do you have an active broadband account with us or TalkTalk mail plus?
as I cannot locate your account" and I confirmed that I have a broadband account, but that line of thinking seems to have died. Can anyone confirm that my email account is correctly linked with my broadband account?

[nambuso-TT]

Hi there @nameunkown. I am very sorry to hear this. I have sent you a private message as there I will need you to provide me with some personal information. Thanks

[nambuso-TT]

@nameunknown thanks for advising and @RigaMortice please tell us how it goes.

[nameunknown]

@RigaMortice 

Okay.

[RigaMortice]

Hi @nameunknown,

Thanks for your latest message. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'd have replied directly except I'm temporarily blocked from any more private messages because I've tried (but failed due to "html errors") to post a message to support too many times. It wasn't even deliberate HTML so took me a while to work out what it was bothered about.

Cheers.

[RigaMortice]

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Just to cover off the most obvious one I have actually changed my email password three times since this started, for different reasons. And as I said much earlier in the thread I'm more than confident that I've typed the correct password at least once into Thunderbird since then but I've never succeeded in signing in since this issue started. But I have accessed webmail with all of those same updated passwords so my typing can't be bad all the time.

@nameunknown, thanks for your offer on openssl and normally I'd be keen to get more diagnostic info about the login failure, but I think by now that TalkTalk probably either already know the cause and are unwilling to share it or simply aren't bothered and hope I'll shut up and go away. I've previously suggested that they might look in their email logs (which I assume they'd have) for the reason for my login failure but my suggestions (and most questions) are just met with silence. Hence posts telling me just to "continue using Webmail"...

[Billx]

@nameunknown 

I have just retested the 3 combinations above and they again went through.

2 of them were delayed by the server a bit, but got through. I used a tiscali.co.uk address with 4 destinations.

I guess, that's life.

Bill

[Billx]

OK @nameunknown 

[nameunknown]

@Billx 

STARTTLS and port 587 (in Thunderbird) used to work for me too, but it does not anymore. SSL/TLS with port 587 does not work either. I retested again just now (with an @talktalk.net email address).  As SSL/TLS with port 587 works for you, I recommend you use that in preference to STARTTLS with port 587.

[nameunknown]

@RigaMortice 

I think it is safe to say something has changed, which is preventing you from successfully logging in. Whilst it is to be expected that the migration may cause some minor disruption, in my opinion, you should not have to wait for migration of all email accounts to be completed, before this issue can be investigated and resolved.

If it were me I would do some further tests.

Firstly, to be absolutely sure that the password is not the cause, I would temporarily change it to something very simple, e.g. 123456$Pword. To change your email account password, login to the Mailbox Manager here: https://apps.talktalk.co.uk/myaccount/#/login .

If that it is unsuccessful, I would do some tests using, for example, openssl.exe, which gives more detail about is happening than is provided by an email application.

If you are interested in trying that, I can provide you with some instructions to follow.

[Billx]

@nameunknown , @RigaMortice 

My Thunderbird sends  perfectly with Port 587 and STARTTLS.

It sends also with Port 587 and SSL/TLS, and with Port 465 and SSL/TLS

This is via smtp.talktalk.net

Bill

[sabelo-TT]

@RigaMortice, I will kindly ask for you to continue using Webmail when accessing your emails. 

[RigaMortice]

I do have an active TT broadband connection and have done so for as long as I've had a talktalk.net email account (or vice versa). Several years anyway.

Being unable to locate my account comes as no surprise - I've suspected an account setup issue for a long while.

[mandisa1-TT]

Hi there @RigaMortice . We sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience caused to you. Just to confirm do you have an active broadband account with us or TalkTalk mail plus?
as I cannot locate your account

[RigaMortice]

Thanks for the suggestion, but it still fails.

Neither sending nor receiving works for me so it's hard to know what to do - other than wait for the migration to end. But nobody seems willing to even hazard a guess (not even the year!) when that might be. I can't believe it's really that open-ended.