Email Trouble Shooting
To troubleshoot some common problems associated with e-mail, check the following:
Invalid Password
If you are receiving an Invalid password or Authentication Failed error message, you may need to verify your account password. To verify your account password in Outlook Express, follow these steps:
- Launch Outlook Express.
- Open the Tools menu and select Accounts.
- Select your account from the list, and then click the Properties button.
- Click the Servers tab.
- Highlight the dots in the Password field, and then re-enter your password. Note: Passwords are cAsE-sENsiTiVe, so make sure that Caps Lock is not on when you enter your password.
- Click OK to save your changes, and then click Close to return to the Outlook Express main window.
- To check for e-mail using your newly re-entered password, click the Send/Recv button.
Returned Undeliverable
The Returned Mail: Undeliverable or User Unknown errors occur for a variety of reasons:
- The e-mail address is not valid. E-mail addresses are made up of the username and the POP server to which the e-mail will be sent (for example, username@popserver.com). The username must be a valid username on an existing POP server. Verify that the username and server are spelled correctly. The username and POP server should be separated by the @ symbol. Make sure that a period is in the POP server (for example, popserver.com).
- The e-mail and the attachment are too large. This error can occur when you are sending e-mail with attachments (pictures, sound files, or other documents) that are larger than the destination POP server will allow. The standard limit most e-mail servers will accept is 2 megabytes (2 MB). If the e-mail you send exceeds the limit allowed by the server to which you are sending it, then your mail will be rejected as undeliverable.
- The e-mail is infected with a virus. If your computer has a virus and your system is sending the virus attached to the e-mail, the receiving server may screen and reject it.
- The e-mail is blocked by the POP server because it is viewed as possible spam.
Dial-Up Disconnected
Dial-Up Disconnects When You Check E-mail in Outlook Express; check the following:
- From the Tools menu, select Options.
- Select the Connections tab. Uncheck the box next to Hang up after sending and receiving. Unchecking this option allows the Internet connection to continue after downloading e-mail.
Suspicious E-mail
When you receive an e-mail from an unknown sender, it should be considered suspicious. The e-mail could contain a virus and should not be opened. If the e-mail appears to be from an unknown sender, you should delete the e-mail and remove it from your system.
Remember that when you delete an e-mail from your Inbox, it is moved to your Deleted Items folder. To remove the e-mail completely from your system, you must empty the Deleted Items folder: Right-click the Deleted Items folder and then select Empty 'Deleted Items' Folder.
Cannot Connect to Host
Here is an example of an error received while checking e-mail. The reason for the error is that the host was input incorrectly. The host should be mail.web-ster.com, not 2mail.web-ster.com.
For the correct configuration information, see the example below.
Bulk Email FAQs
Why are there limits?
Much of the spam you now get is not sent from specific computers. Spammers send out robot software (bots) on the Internet where they can infect your computer. Your infected computer starts to send out spam emails without you even knowing! Other email systems worldwide will then block your email address as someone sending spam, preventing you from emailing anyone. In extreme cases they may even block everyone using the same email system!
Spammers want to send as many emails from your computer as fast as possible before your computer is blocked. To protect you and other users of our email systems we watch for large numbers of emails sent in a short period of time. By making simple changes to how you send large numbers of emails you can still send large numbers of legitimate emails without being blocked as spam.
What are the limits?
Spam blocking software looks for certain behaviors. It looks for:
- How many emails with similar content are sent out in a short period of time.
- How many bad addresses it goes to. Spam goes to random email addresses so it typically has a lot of bad address return errors.
To help separate legitimate emails from spam groups, emails that have the same content are assigned a point value. The point value is compared to a bulk email limit. The limit in our system is 500 points per 5 minute period. Receiving systems may have their own limits.
Good email addresses are 1 point. If all the addresses in your list are good then you could send to 500 people at once.
Bad email addresses are 10 points. If all the email addresses in your list were bad blocking would start after 50 bad emails in a short period of time.
The limit is a combination of good and bad address points. Your list of 300 names might contain enough bad addresses to trigger the limit. People do change email addresses so with any large list you will have some bad addresses. Keeping your list up to date will help you be able to send to more people at once. Remove addresses that are bad. Allow people an easy way to tell you when they don't want regular newsletters or other messages. The "bad address" may be someone who has refused the email by blacklisting emails from your address because they didn't want those messages.
What happens if I exceed the limit?
If you exceed the limit you will get an error message that emails could not be delivered. This is often a "602" error but may vary as some of the error messages come from email servers outside our system. Many other email systems have bulk email limits and we do not control their number of bulk emails received limits or error messages.
If you have exceeded internal limits your ability to send emails may be limited for up to 6 hours. If this happens please contact our technical support staff and they can reset your account prior to the end of the 6 hour time frame. It will automatically reset after 6 hours.
How can I send a newsletter to more to than a few hundred people?
The limit is based on number of emails in a 5 minute period. The simplest way is to split your list into parts and wait 5 minutes between sending parts. For example, if you are sending to 600 people split the list into two 300 person sections and send two separate group emails 5 minutes apart.
Some email software lets you set a time for the message to be delivered and this can be used to delay when to send different groups.
There are software programs that allow you to automate group emails without exceeding set limits. If you regularly send out bulk emails to several hundred or more people these programs will help with this process including setting how many addresses are sent emails per minute.
Entering "group email software" into your favorite search engine will bring up several software programs that will help you send out bulk emails.
We cannot recommend specific bulk email software as each person's situation is unique.
One caution: some bulk email software allows you to send emails directly to the Internet instead of through our email server. This will let you send to many email accounts at once with no outgoing limits. However, other email systems also have limits that identify what they consider spam sending computers. Those systems may blacklist your computer as a spam sender preventing you from sending email to users of their systems.
Viruses & Spyware
Viruses and Spyware are two of the largest problems facing Internet users today. Viruses and Spyware can cause performance problems on your computer, and can also contribute to the loss of important files and personal information.
To combat computer viruses, we recommend that you use a virus filtering program--such as Norton Antivirus, McAfee or AVG. We also recommend that you regularly update the software (on a weekly basis, if possible), in order to keep up with the latest viruses.
To help prevent the effects of spyware, you can install and run a number of free utilities that are found on the Internet.