SMTP - email problem

Having used email addresses tied to my domains for years I wish to keep them operational. However, changing security moves have made it difficult to access SMTP and hinders sending emails. The ISP I use has limited access (only those using his block of IP addresses) to SMTP. If away from the home service I can’t use his SMTP.

Someone has suggested a gmail account may enable me to avoid this problem. Does anyone know if it is possible to use a ‘private’ domain email address (eg citroen@denmarkwa.biz) through gmail?

Yes – if you pay for it. I run a charitable organisation’s emails using Google Workspace. Does your domain provider allow you to modify MX records for the domain; you’ll need that to move over to Google.

Thanks for the info.

As we have three custom email addresses it seems we’d have to pay an additional $AU25 per month just to send our emails.

Ross, are your domains on a hosting companies servers, or are they on your ISP’s servers systems? If they on a hosting companies servers and not your ISP’s servers you should be able to bypass your ISP’s SMTP server and send your emails directly to your Hosting company SMTP server.

What do you mean by ‘changing security moves’ if this is a case of them wanting you to use a secure connection, then almost all mail clients etc should be able to deal with this as it is becoming the norm now. You do not say which email client you are you.

you should be able to bypass your ISP’s SMTP server and send your emails directly to your Hosting company SMTP server

Unless your ISP is a toerag and routes all SMTP traffic to their server. Seen that.

you should be able to bypass your ISP’s SMTP server and send your emails directly to your Hosting company SMTP server

…assuming that your hosting package contains email accounts and not just email forwarding – which might be what the $AU25/month is for…

Definitely agree with Chris H that more info would help.

Generally speaking, domains come with SMTP facilities (because without it they’re largely useless in an era of dmarc and spf checking). If so, then you should be able to use those SMTP servers via authenticated SMTP (ie. username/password) all the time, from anywhere. Emails can be routed autmatically via the appropriate SMTP server.

As Steve F says, however, if you’re relying on domains auto-forwarding to your ISP’s address, that may be less than ideal. However, I’d discuss this with your hosting provider as these days you basically can’t use email addresses without corresponding SMTP servers, because webmail services such as gmail or outlook will auto-block you if your sending SMTP server doesn’t match the domain you’re using. It would therefore be very odd to have a domain with email facilities and no smtp.

The domain is hosted by a small local ISP and has been with them for over 25 years. While we had our internet service through them it was OK as they issued the IP address and their system considered us a ‘friend’ not a ‘threat’ to their system.
Since we sold our farm we have not had an internet service other than through wifi and have relied on a Non authenticated connection in the settings (Thunderbird 115.8.0). The wifi (through our mobile data connected via a usb-RJ45 to our home router) has been working fine for over twelve months. Recently mail was bounced with various messages (eg too many recipients – even if there was only one) and the solution provided was to switch to ‘authenticated’ with a user name and a password. We have neither as our mobile phones are pay as you go.
After a few days impasse the service was resumed with the demand for ‘authentication’ dropped.
So in preparation for the next round of ‘security’ I thought I should seek some workaround – preferably without having to pay hundreds of dollars to take our a ‘real $$$’ internet connection via the FTTP. Our slow, low data allowance mobile connection is fine for our use. And it costs a lot less than a super fast, unlimited downloads FTTP connection.

Recently mail was bounced with various messages (eg too many recipients – even if there was only one) and the solution provided was to switch to ‘authenticated’ with a user name and a password. We have neither as our mobile phones are pay as you go.

I don’t understand your last sentence there. The useraname and password used by Thunderbird are nothing to do with your phones: they are a username and password on your mail provider’s SMTP (and POP/IMAP) server, and you can set them. If you don’t know how, you need to ask your mail provider.

So in preparation for the next round of ‘security’ I thought I should seek some workaround – preferably without having to pay hundreds of dollars to take our a ‘real $$$’ internet connection via the FTTP.

FTTP won’t help, as the username and password will still be on your mail provider’s server. You need to talk to your mail provider about how to discover and/or set them.

To be honest, I’m surprised that your mail provider dropped the authentication requirement for you. Whilst you were their customer, you were being authenticated by your internet connection. Now, if you’re really on a different ISP and connection, then remember that if you can log in to your mail server without providing authentication, then so can anyone else anywhere in the world. That’s far from ideal for you or your mail provider.

I’m just as confused. I’ve been piggybacking of the Telstra network using an unauthenticated tab. Telstra have decided to insist on authenticated users. This requires a user name and a password. Our mail provider’s SMTP will only accept users on their internet customer base (those who have an internet service with them)

When I was regularly updating websites hosted there initially all I did was use FTP – it recognised me as a customer via the IP address. Once I no longer had a service through them (because of our location a two way satellite was the only way to go and our ISP did not handle them. Only certain ISPs were using the two way sats)

When wanting to do FTP I needed to establish what my IP address was, email or telephone my host and get him to insert that into his system to allow us past the firewall. If our internet address was reset (which was frequently I’d have to repeat the process of establishing what my new IP address was etc)

As I understand it the email is similarly protected. Unless you are a user with an internet service through my ISP the SMTP server rejects attempts to send email.

Far from ideal it certainly is. But unless we move onto pricey monthly mobile phone plans with data credits way beyond our needs we are stuck. It seems to be the only way to get a user name and a password. PAYG is not doing it.

I’m just as confused. I’ve been piggybacking of the Telstra network using an unauthenticated tab. Telstra have decided to insist on authenticated users.

As Andrew mentioned earlier, DMARC and SPF records are probably the issue. Simply put, every mail server in the world exchanges mail with other mail servers or the IP / Domain limited mail clients – except open mail relays¹ which accept incoming mail from any old connection. At a guess, Telstra were operating an open mail relay and now require authentication when the incoming mail connection is from an IP/domain they don’t have listed.² Or have I misinterpreted and it is your mail provider requiring that? I think the former – Telstra.

This requires a user name and a password. Our mail provider’s SMTP will only accept users on their internet customer base (those who have an internet service with them)

If you can provide a known IP, or domain name source then they can add that, but I suspect Telstra would be using private address ranges in their mobile network and NATing that to the good old interweb on a pool of RIPE addresses which wouldn’t make you very identifiable to your mail provider, as you’ve noted.

You should be able to test to see what the server you are connecting to is expecting in response terms if you use Curl as per this thread

I think where we go to with erik doing the testing was this: curl -url "imaps://imap.gmail.com" -u "erichk @ gmail.com:password123" --no-keepalive -v

It seems to be the only way to get a user name and a password. PAYG is not doing it.

Sadly, limiting spam has a downside in that innocent users suffer the restrictions on use and the providers want paying.

Your mail provider may be able to alter things to allow connections from the real world address range that Telstra use: Listing here

¹ Open mail relays are the spammers paradise

Suggest always decoupling your domain from whatever ISP you happen to be using.

I’ve been having problems with email sent to my personal domain (registered with what is now namesco) which is redirected to my ISP (PlusNet) which over the past year has taken to bounce a lot of back to the sender (particularly the children’s school), and aren’t interested in fixing it as they intend to drop email altogether soon.

So I’m either looking for an alternative email provider who doesn’t bounce stuff, or as my domain is due to renewal in a month, a domain register that charges a reasonable amount to host half a dozen pop mail boxes. Any ideas?

Druck, I am also with PlusNet and do not normally use there email facilities anymore. My personal domains (I have two) are now hosted on a company called 20i based in the UK. I can have 100 email address per domain. I do not use any web space although they can offer it if wanted. I also no longer do any email forwarding via Plusnet due to the well known issues of SPF, DMARC and DKIM. I collect my email and send emails directly via 20i email servers, This has worked well for the pass two years.

Ross – when I’m back from the show, drop me an email, and we can discuss it further. It is likely that you just need to use your hosting (domain) username/password with their SMTP server, but knowing that info is key. I don’t really have time to go into detail today (hence email), but I can explain it all and how to set it up under RISC OS.

What you’re wanting is not unusual – as I said, because of SPF checking, EVERYONE needs to use the correct/matching SMTP servers now. This won’t be news to your providers – it is the same for every platform and every email package. So, there will be a solution.

Chris, thanks for that link, they do seem to be remarkably good value compared to the others I’ve looked at, almost too good!

Well I’ve signed up with 20i. I actually bought ruck.org.uk for use by the rest of the family while waiting to transfer druck.org.uk over, and that turned out to be free for a year – bonus!

I say free by 20i, but names.co.uk charged £10 to release it. They are no incredibly bad value these days charging £20 a year, and £14 per year for 10 years. I think it was £2.99 originally back when it was still simplynames.co.uk (22 years ago). They also wanted an obscene amount per month for 5 mail boxes, so that was out of the question.

20i are more than reasonable with domain, web and email hosting for about £7 a year, so I don’t expect them to stay that way for long. The set up was pretty straighfoward even though I had a lot of mail boxes and redirects between the domains to set up. Hopefully the DKIM and DMARC stuff will stop the school’s emails bouncing back all the time.

PlusNet can now go and retire their flaky email service, and I can look forward to slightly less grief from the wife.