Lost E-Mails! Gone forever?

[fireballuk2001]

Hi guys...

I've just tried to recieve my emails, and outlook express said it was recieving 7 emails. It then said the messages could not be found. I didnt get my emails. It now says i have no new messages! I've been expecting some important emails today, and i fear they have been lost! Have they gone forever? or is there something i can do?

Cheers guys!

[mmm]

Hi guys...

I've just tried to recieve my emails, and outlook express said it was recieving 7 emails. It then said the messages could not be found. I didnt get my emails. It now says i have no new messages! I've been expecting some important emails today, and i fear they have been lost! Have they gone forever? or is there something i can do?

Cheers guys!

Are you sure they weren't spam and you have rules to automatically delete them - are they now in a junk-mail of deleted items folder?

Just in case it is just OE playing up, log in vis the web-mail and see if you can find anything there

[fireballuk2001]

No, i do have rules to delete spam, but its not this in this case. I got an error message in the send and recieve box, under the errors tab, saying that the messages could not be found on the server. It said this for 7 messages. It didnt download them properly and it now says i have no new messages. I'm very good with computers, and can assure you this isn't due to some spam rules. Its definaely an ntl server issue. I've emailed em about this but im sure ill have to wait ages for a reply.

[greencreeper]

I've a strong suspicion I'm losing emails too - for some weeks now. I should receive about 3 or 4 automated emails from various employment sites each week, but at the moment I'm not getting them. I've checked and everything is fine (i.e. the emails should be sent according to the preferences I'm chosen) and I have received emails in the past. Not sure what to make of it :(

[SMHarman]

NTL may be killing them if their system considers them spam.

Should have gone to brightmail.

[Paul]

NTL may be killing them if their system considers them spam.

Pretty unlikely - there is no evidence to suggest such a thing happens - more likely a fault with the server - e-mails do sometimes seem to disappear when a backup server comes online - and when the original is restored the e-mails re-appear.


Should have gone to brightmail.

Who :confused: - not the most well known of alternatives - but yes - there are many alternative e-mail providers - and no-one could say NTL's e-mail is the most reliable at the moment.

[greencreeper]

NTL may be killing them if their system considers them spam

Yeah that was my fear, though like Pem says, NTL haven't implemented anti-spam facilities. Well - they haven't told us they have and NTL are always reliable and accurate when it comes to communicating with their valued customers :erm:

[SMHarman]

Who :confused: - not the most well known of alternatives - but yes - there are many alternative e-mail providers - and no-one could say NTL's e-mail is the most reliable at the moment.

Pretty well known of globally.

http://www.brightmail.com/

Highest Accuracy 99.9999%
False positives (messages incorrectly identified as spam) cause users to lose faith in spam blocking. From day one, Brightmail has had an unwavering commitment to protecting legitimate mail. Many Brightmail customers feel comfortable deleting spam without review.
Automated and manual safeguards
Support for false positive submissions
Review (by a Brightmail technician) of every false positive
Corrected rules deployed globally within minutes
Only introduces a new technology after it has passed rigorous accuracy standards

"Brightmail Anti-Spam's false-positive score speaks for itself. If you want to make sure that important messages get through to your employees, BAS is the best answer we know of."
†” PC Magazine, 11/11/03
"Brightmail caught the highest percentage of spam and had the lowest false-positive rate of any of the products tested."
†” InfoWorld, 11/17/03

http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/announce/2004/da2004-01-28a.shtml

http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/faq/spamfiltering.shtml

How accurate is this email filtering service?

No filtering system is 100% effective, and there is a very small chance (Brightmail suggest it is less than one in million) that a non-spam email will trigger a filtering rule by mistake. However, if your correspondents are sending email via a system that has been flagged as generating nothing but spam then it may be blocked as well. If legitimate email is being blocked then the sender should then receive a "bounce" message. In the most unlikely event that your correspondents have any problems then please send the details of this to us at helpdesk@demon.net so that we can investigate and adjust as necessary.

You may still see a small amount of incoming spam. If your address is targeted before Brightmail spots the spam run (once one of their dummy addresses is hit they usually get rules in place within a few minutes) then you'll be unlucky enough to receive some spam. However, overall, THUS believes that this is a very effective spam filtering system and recommends customers use it to reduce the volume of unsolicited email.

[goblin]

e-mail providers - and no-one could say NTL's e-mail is the most reliable at the moment.

Hi,

Speaking as someone who has spent since 1500 hrs YESTERDAY (it's 0241hrs now) trying to download email from at least 5 people only to find the email servers either constantly timeout or just don't authenticate me. I am pretty ****** at NTL's idea of email provision right now :mad:. So am hoping to find some alternatives - I suspect the OP might also benefit from this. So with this in mind, seeing as you seem to be the man to ask. Who are these other email providers? I am assuming they aren't hotmail, yahoo, bigfoot etc.

My own requirement is for *reliable and Independant* pop3\smtp service - if this costs. Then so be it. If it comes free without advertising, then I suppose I could just about learn to live with it :D

Thanks.

[byron_hinson]

I've lost a few e-mails, even a test one i sent to my account never turned up from somepoint.

[Neil]

I sent Ben 2 emails to his ntl address yesterday-one of them while I was on MSN with him, yet neither of them arrived. :rolleyes:

[Paul]

Hi,

My own requirement is for *reliable and Independant* pop3\smtp service - if this costs. Then so be it. If it comes free without advertising, then I suppose I could just about learn to live with it :D

Thanks.

Just do a search for uk e-mail providers, there are far too many for me to list - also, almost any ISP provides them with their PAYG dial up accounts as well. I personally have a virgin.net account as my backup as well as an orange.net account associated with my mobile - The orange servers seem to drop out sometimes but I can't remember the last time the virgin servers fell over.

One thing to remember is that some of these services are incoming only - you still need to send via the NTL smtp servers (unless you have your own of course).

[Toreador]

This has happened to me twice now that I know of, once at the beginning of last year and once a few weeks ago. Both times it was while there were email problems ongoing.
I access my mail while away from home using webmail. So I knew that some emails had arrived, and even read one of them. A few hours later, when the problems were resolved, the new messages had all disappeared. I assume that they had restored from a backup of some sort and lost any data not included, but I'm just guessing.
In both cases I contacted NTL asking for an explanation, and in both cases they ignored me completely.

[goblin]

Just do a search for uk e-mail providers, there are far too many for me to list - also, almost any ISP provides them with their PAYG dial up accounts as well. I personally have a virgin.net account as my backup as well as an orange.net account associated with my mobile - The orange servers seem to drop out sometimes but I can't remember the last time the virgin servers fell over.


Good point. Which is one of the reasons I retain a freeuk account. It does the job admirably. Though it wouldn't have done me much good yesterday as that required an email address associated with my ip address.


One thing to remember is that some of these services are incoming only - you still need to send via the NTL smtp servers (unless you have your own of course).

Yes, that's the thing I am trying to get away from. I want for the most part reliability. I want to know that as soon as someone sends me an email I am going to get it. This of course (under the present circumstances) requires NTL to have absolutely no part in the process other than providing me with a connection. If possible, I don't want my mail to even touch NTL's mailserver. I imagine this must be possibly somehow, looks like I have some investigating to do :)

Thanks for the replies. If anyone reading this has any idea how whilst using my NTL connection, I can avoid using NTL's mail server - I'd like to hear it please. Or for that matter if you have any experience of such a service I would like to hear about it.

Thanks again.

[mnw21cam]

Yes, that's the thing I am trying to get away from. I want for the most part reliability. I want to know that as soon as someone sends me an email I am going to get it. This of course (under the present circumstances) requires NTL to have absolutely no part in the process other than providing me with a connection. If possible, I don't want my mail to even touch NTL's mailserver. I imagine this must be possibly somehow, looks like I have some investigating to do :)
I don't care about incoming servers, because they are so easy to come by - heck, I run one on my own machine. Outgoing servers are more of an issue, because some servers do not accept mail directly from dynamic addresses.

My current setup is to send messages directly except when sending to a few preset fussy domains, where they get sent via the NTL outgoing SMTP servers. Because I don't trust these servers as far as I can throw them, I made a little program that monitors them, by sending an email every hour or so. Lots of messages just randomly go missing, take a week, etc. Even more interesting is when the outgoing server refuses to accept the message, but then delivers it anyway, resulting in messages being delivered multiple times when the client retries. I have been seeing quite a lot of that over the last day or two.

[APS]

I made a little program that monitors them, by sending an email every hour or so. Lots of messages just randomly go missing, take a week, etc. Even more interesting is when the outgoing server refuses to accept the message, but then delivers it anyway, resulting in messages being delivered multiple times when the client retries. I have been seeing quite a lot of that over the last day or two.
Hey - sounds like you have a product you could sell to NTL. It would seem they need it as it would just go to show the problems many of us have been complaining about for ages.

I suspect though that they know what they have is cr*p - most systems will generate logs files that if anaylysed properly would show most of the problem. As we know they made claims to be going to replace the mail servers with a well known commerical package. The replacement just seems to be such a long time coming.

APS

[mnw21cam]

Hey - sounds like you have a product you could sell to NTL. It would seem they need it as it would just go to show the problems many of us have been complaining about for ages.

It's about 30 lines of bash script to generate logs, and a 100 line Java program for log file analysis. They could cobble something similar together in half an hour if they wanted to and had someone with a Clue(tm).

I suspect though that they know what they have is cr*p - most systems will generate logs files that if anaylysed properly would show most of the problem. As we know they made claims to be going to replace the mail servers with a well known commerical package. The replacement just seems to be such a long time coming.
There are bad commercial systems just as there are good commercial systems. However, if I was the person advising them on what system to use, I would probably throw a Linux cluster running Exim at them. Outgoing SMTP servers are not hard.

[XFS03]

ntl seem to be worse than Royal Mail at the moment for losing mail.

Normally, when I check my email first thing in the morning, I get 20 to 30 messages, mostly spam, but with a few wanted ones mixed in. This morning when I checked there was only 3. I know that there should have been one from a m8 (who is also with ntl) but it wasn't there. When I told him I hadn't received it, he checked with a few others that he had sent emails to that day, and not one had been received.

When he resent the email to my freeserve address I received it straight away. Now, when I tried to email him back to let him know that I had received it, I got an error message saying that his email address has been rejected by the server. I have tried a few times during the day with the same response.

[dragon]

a suggestion for alternatives most webhosts also provide email ;)

[greencreeper]

I recently got this after emailing a mate:

This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:

Your message was not delivered because the destination computer was
not reachable within the allowed queue period. The amount of time
a message is queued before it is returned depends on local configura-
tion parameters.

Most likely there is a network problem that prevented delivery, but
it is also possible that the computer is turned off, or does not
have a mail system running right now.

Your message was not delivered within 4 days.
Host hotmail.com is not responding.

Hotmail down for more than 4 days? :erm: By the time I got the above email we had already chatted on MSN :rolleyes:

[mnw21cam]

Hotmail down for more than 4 days? :erm: By the time I got the above email we had already chatted on MSN :rolleyes:
When I was postmaster for the last company I worked for I always had problems delivering mail to hotmail. An outgoing server will only try a certain number of times, and if the receiving server is unable to accept the message for all of them, that error is produced. The problem I had was that hotmail was so busy dealing with other requests that it didn't have the resources to accept the messages we were sending. Of course, sensible outgoing servers will batch together messages to be sent to the same server, so someone else's message that hasn't got through can cause yours to fail too (because the outgoing server knows that the receiving server is failing). It was a matter of statistics - a certain number of senders would get through before timing out, and the rest wouldn't.