Emails not Arriving

[Johnny-D1-RWEW]

I have been in email correspondence with my friend in Australia for some years. Within the last two weeks, his emails to me have failed to be delivered to my email account (he gets a Daemon message telling him delivery has failed). This is the case whether it's a single email to me or to a group we have in place - everyone else in the group continues to receive his emails and they all receive mine.  I have no filters in place which would affect this and definitely none applied recently. I use GoogleChrome browser. He has a Yahoo email account as does his partner whose emails get to me OK. Any ideas on how I can resolve this please?? John

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Hi John, when did you last scan your internet connected devices with Anti Virus and malware checkers? How long since you reset the password?

Ady

[Gondola]

You already have a pragmatic solution to use the Microsoft email address to keep in touch.

The outgoing mail from two completely different email accounts that does not reach your TalkTalk mailbox would need to be investigated.  You didn't say if the Gmail ended up in Spam or if that also got a Mailer-Daemon failure.

Did your Aussie friend try sending a plain text message; no spam keywords, no attachments and no use of any VPN service. Also try sending from a different ISP. For example if their home broadband is provided by Telstra then try sending from a mobile service or alternate hot spot. 

Troubleshooting needs a lot of time and effort. The last time I investigated a failure to get emails between TalkTalk Mail and a BigPond address (Telstra) there was an issue with the Telstra servers at Melbourne. So whilst I'm not discounting a fail at the TalkTalk end it's not by any means the sole reason for not getting mail from two different email services from the same source in Australia.

I will ask TalkTalk to check this end. For TalkTalk Support include in your Community Profile, Personal Information (here):

• Your name, current home 'phone number. An alternative (mobile preferred) contact number.
  Full address with postcode (Location)
• Scroll down to Private notes to add your email address and the sending email address(es), notes and references etc
• After checking and updating, Save changes

[Johnny-D1-RWEW]

Just to let you know that deletion of all the rules in my mailbox have not resolved the issue. I have also checked the spam controls and it appears that I at least have not inadvertently marked my friend's e-mail as spam. 

My friend apparently tried using an alternative Gmail account/address to email me but that never appeared in my TT inbox either. Which is even more perplexing as we've never used that email address of his before.

However, I've now established that an alternative Outlook/Microsoft email account I have does receive his emails OK - so it seems the problem is with my TT account!

Any ideas where I can go from here?

Regards

John

[Gondola]

Sometimes the mailer-daemon delivery notification fail will contain additional information either in the body of the mailer-daemon message or in a plain text attachment. So it's worth asking.

Do let us know if the deletion of all Rules in your mailbox has indeed fixed the issue or not. I do know from previous checks on the yahoo.com domain that TalkTalk's CloudMark network filters do block some mail from the domain but allow through a lot.

I'd suggest your Aussie friend trying a plain text message; no spam keywords, no attachments and no use of any VPN service as that IP address may be flagged as a spam sender.

[Johnny-D1-RWEW]

Many thanks for this. I thought I had already deleted all my filter rules but when I followed your advice I'd missed a couple,  which I have now also deleted. There's no obvious reasons why those two filters would have resulted in my friend's emails not finishing up in my inbox but we'll give things another try and see if deleting those two rules have resolved the issue.

Ref your advice on Mailer-Daemon bounceback is it worth me trying to determine whether it contained any error code which would help clarify the problem?

I very much appreciate your help on this.

Regards 

John

[Gondola]

The Mailer-Daemon bounceback from the Yahoo.com.au sending mail server just indicates that the mail cannot be delivered even after retries. Normally if the inbound TalkTalk Mail server rejects mail it sends a bounceback error message including a description and a TT three digit error code. So the absence of that code doesn't help to identify what's happening.

Just in case, I would delete any Blocked Senders Filter Rule and delete or disable all other Rules operating on your mailbox messages. 

Select here:  Sign in to TalkTalk Mail

Enter your TalkTalk email address and email password, select Sign in.

Check the  Inbox first and then check  Spam and  Trash folders for mail messages that may have been diverted from the Inbox. Bear in mind the spam and trash folders normally contain mail not older than 30 days.

Mail not reaching the Inbox could mean there's a Filter rule, including an Auto forward which is a special filter rule, that's diverting, discarding or blocking mail.

• Select the Main settings menu cog icon      top right on the blue header
• Select All settings, or if using a mobile browser it's Menu then the cog icon for Settings
• Select Mail and scroll down to Rules
  Select the chevron icon > to see all defined Rules
  If there's no rule defined, that's perfect
• To delete a Filter rule including any Auto forward
  select the X icon to the right of the rule
  The icon background will turn red  X
  
• To confirm you really want to delete this Filter rule
  Select the blue Delete button

Let us know if you do have Rules that have now been deleted or disabled (temporarily during troubleshooting).