Category: Email (Page 1 of 2)

Mail2World ↔ Gmail Problems

September 11, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 1 Comment

If you use Shentel (or other Mail2World) email, you might notice that you can’t get an email to go through to someone’s Gmail address. Or maybe a Gmail user is telling you that they can’t send email to you at your Shentel.net address. I’ve seen Mail2World ↔ Gmail Problems off and on for many years now. Here are Too Many Words™ about why that is:

Email Authentication

As email flies around the globe, it runs through many checks and authentication. Mail servers scan email for legitimacy, spam content and other safety concerns. These authorization methods are a bit above my paygrade to discuss in detail, but the main ones are called SPF, DKIM and DMARC. You can look them up and read about them, if that’s your cup of tea.

Google takes security seriously. They are very strict with their email authentication, and they frequently improve their server security. Due to Google’s size, when they raise the bar for email authentication, it affects the entire world. Other providers take notice and follow suit whenever Google makes a change to their email protocols. If email providers don’t update their email security to match Google, some legitimate email may be marked as spam. Other email may simply not get through.

The Email Block

And here we get to a problem I frequently see with Shentel email and other Mail2World-offered email addresses. It goes both ways:

Gmail user sends a message to a Shentel address, and receives an Undeliverable message in response.
Shentel mail user sends a message to a Gmail address, and receives an Failed_Precondition message in response.

You can always try sending your email in a different way. Log into a different browser or a different email app. Try using the webmail site, if you haven’t already. Go to a different computer or device. If the problem persists across multiple pieces of technology, then the problem is not yours and it’s out of your hands.

What to Do About It

If you’ve got Mail2World ↔ Gmail Problems, it is Mail2World’s fault. M2W needs to update & fix their email security. For anyone impacted by this, please consider these options:

Call Shentel tech support at 1-800-SHENTEL and report the details of your email error messages.
Email Mail2World tech support at support@mail2world.com
Consider creating/switching to another email address

I really do need you to consider that last one, if you suffer from this problem. Shentel can only report your trouble to Mail2World. Mail2World may or may not respond to your direct queries. They do respond to emails… sometimes. They have fixed this kind of problem before… but it took weeks or even months. Please know that Gmail/Outlook/AOL/Yahoo/ProtonMail/Apple email addresses typically do NOT have this problem! There are more reliable email products out there for you!

New Storage Limits on Outlook.com

April 13, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Microsoft has made some changes to the amount of free storage you get with their email and other cloud services. If you are a paid member of Microsoft 365, you probably don’t have to worry about any of this. But free users are in a different boat. The new storage limits on Outlook.com email addresses are likely to cause confusion and total email blockage!

There’s a lot of confusion about it all, because Microsoft has created a very complicated problem here. I hope I can explain it a little better than they do:

The Basic Quotas

Free users of Microsoft storage get 5GB of storage space for their files. This is where your OneDrive files go, if you use that.
Free users of Microsoft email get 15GB of storage space for their emails, contacts and calendar entries.
Microsoft free services work great, until you exceed a storage quota. Once you exceed a quota, the service stops working until you resolve the overage.

The Confusion

Here’s where Microsoft has made things confusing: your email attachments now count against both quotas. Depending on the size of your total saved attachments, you can be under quota in Outlook.com, but over your quota for Microsoft (cloud) storage. I’ll paint a hypothetical for you:

Let’s say that I’ve been saving years of emails in my Outlook.com address, and those messages total 10GB in size. That’s fine! That’s well under the 15GB Outlook.com quota. But due to the new rule, those 10GB of messages have close to 10GB of attachments, and those count against the other quota. When Microsoft notices that my email attachments are exceeding my 5GB Microsoft storage quota, they shut down my email, until I fix it.

When this email stoppage occurs, you will see it when you visit your email on the web, at Outlook.com. You may not get this stoppage alert in other email clients (Thunderbird, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.)! So if your Outlook.com address is malfunctioning, visit the Microsoft email website to see if you get an explanation there.

Resolving an Email Stoppage

If your Outlook.com email has stoppage due to this quota issue, you’ll see a message about it at the top, as you log into the email website. But go further to see a proper breakdown and explanation of the quotas for your account:

Once logged in at Outlook.com, click the settings Cogwheel to the upper-right.
Go down the list and click View All Outlook Settings.
On the left, click General, and then click Storage in the second column.

You’ll see something like this:

If the Total used figure is over 5GB, you have a problem to address. You can either a) start deleting emails, or b) pay Microsoft for more storage.

If you’re of a mind to delete things, click the link for Outlook (Attachments) next to Free Up Space. That should take you back to your inbox, but sorted such that the largest email with attached files are at the top. Trash as much as you can stand, and then refresh the page to recheck your quota.

Or if you prefer, Microsoft will sell you more storage for as low as $20/year. If you sign up for Microsoft 365 Basic, your email storage quota will jump to 50GB instantly.

Ads in Your Email Signatures

March 25, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Some companies and software products use your email to advertise their product. Free antivirus companies commonly do this, but Microsoft and Apple are also guilty of this. They insert a blurb into your email signature, so that everyone you contact will read a promotion text at the end of your message.

Other companies do not engage in this behavior, but if you are uncertain, send yourself an email to check. I’ve met many people that had no idea that their email signature had been repurposed as a billboard.

And if you find something unnecessary in your email signature, you do have the right to turn it off or delete it out of there!

Windows Mail

If you use the Mail app under Windows 10/11:

Open Mail
Click the cogwheel icon
Click Signature
Turn off “Use an email signature”
Click Save

Apple Mail

If you use the Mail app on any iPhone or iPad:

Tap on Settings
Tap on Mail
Tap on Signature
Backspace over the text until “Sent from my iPhone” is gone

Microsoft Outlook

If you use the Outlook app on your phone:

Open Outlook
Tap the Outlook button to the upper-left
Tap the Settings cogwheel to the lower-left
Tap Signature
Backspace over the text until “Get Outlook for Android/iOS” is gone
Tap the checkmark to the upper-right

AOL App

If you use the AOL app on your mobile device:

Open AOL and tap the Inbox icon to the lower-left
Tap the Account button to the upper-left
Tap the Settings cogwheel
Scroll down and tap Signatures
Use the slider to turn off “Include signature in new messages”

ProtonMail

If you use ProtonMail on the web:

Click Settings, then click Go to Settings.
On the left, click Identity and addresses.
Delete the text in the Signature box.

Special note: ProtonMail has an additional ad at the bottom of their emails, called the Proton Mail footer. You’ll see it right below the Signature box. You cannot turn off this footer, unless you upgrade to a paid plan.

Avast Antivirus Free

Open Avast Antivirus
Click the Hamburger Menu
Click Settings
Click Protection
Click Core Shields
Scroll down to “Configure shield settings” and click Mail Shield
Uncheck the box for “Add a signature to the end of sent emails”

AVG Antivirus Free

Open AVG Antivirus
Click the Hamburger Menu
Click Settings
Click Basic Protection
Click Email Shield
Uncheck the box for “Add a signature to the end of sent emails”

Let me know if you notice this with any other big name software or email product, and I may be able to add the removal steps to this post, thanks!

Microsoft Outlook for Mac — Now Free!

March 7, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Microsoft has made their Outlook email client free to download & use on Apple computers.

This is just for the Outlook app. If you want Word, Excel or other Office apps, you’ll still have to pay up. Or use LibreOffice.

Outlook aims to be the swiss-army tool of mail clients, with calendaring, tasks and more. If you prefer something more simplistic, MacOS Mail isn’t going anywhere. And if you need something with lots of features but want to avoid Micro$oft, there’s always the free Thunderbird email client.

Check Mail from Other Accounts with Gmail

February 11, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Google has built in a very useful feature with their email service. In Gmail, you can configure something called “Check Mail from other Accounts”, and then Google will continually pull in the messages sent to another email address you control. You can do this with one or many other email addresses!

The Steps

Before you start, make sure you know your full email address and its login password.

Go to your Gmail at Gmail.com on a computer.
Click the cogwheel icon.
Click See All Settings.
Click Accounts and Import.
Scroll down to find the subsection labelled Check mail from other accounts.
Click Add an email account and fill in an email address. Click Next.
Choose Import mail from my other account (POP3) and click Next again.
Adjust the Username field to show the entire email address that you want Google to check.
Type in its password in the second field.
You may want to check the box next to Label incoming messages so that the incoming messages stand out from the ones sent directly to your Gmail.
Click Add Account to finish.

Disclaimers & Cautions

If that final setup screen did not fill in the POP server field automagically, you may have to figure out the correct server name to enter. You may also have to double-check the port number. That may mean calling your ISP or doing some research. Reach out to me if you need help with this!

This process can result in you importing a lot of email. If the other address has a lot of email in the inbox, you can expect a lot to arrive in your Gmail. But it shouldn’t hurt anything. At the worst, you’ll just have a lot of unneeded messages to delete.

This only brings messages. Contacts, Calendar entries or Notes are separate and would involve a different set of steps to bring over.

Google only checks the other email once an hour for new messages. That means that as people email your other address, they will arrive in your Gmail inbox, but there may be a time delay of up to one hour.

What Good Is All of This?

People most commonly use this feature when they are switching from an old email address to a new Gmail. It’s really helpful, because all of the old email dumps into the new Gmail inbox. Now you only have one inbox to check! And the label feature helps you determine who is still using the old address. You’ll know form that whom to contact, to let them know about your new address.

You might use this feature, even if you plan to keep the other email address, long-term. It may be too much work to abandon the other address, but it may still help to have everything arriving in one inbox.

Also, Gmail’s spam filter may be the best of its kind, at least amongst free offerings. Routing a spam-laden email address into your Gmail inbox can filter out a horde of nastiness.

Lastly, I often recommend this approach when mail forwarding is not working for someone. If you had set up mail forwarding in your other address and it wasn’t reliable, you can turn it off and try this method instead. Google will get the job done properly.

Shentel/Mail2World’s 2023 Email Outage

February 10, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Can you believe it’s been a whole year since the worldwide Mail2World 2022 email outage? Also: Can you believe it’s only been a year and Mail2World has brought us another email outage?

OK, so far, it looks like it’s only affecting Shentel email. I am checking in with other Mail2World clients, and they report no issues at this time. But if you use Shentel email, you may not be able to access your messages, nor will you be able to send or receive anything.

This outage seems to extend to Shentel Webmail, mail clients, and the mobile app. Wherever you go, Shentel email is kicking up some scary security warnings:

If you’re suffering from these errors, there little that you or I can do. It’s on Mail2World to fix this. They may have forgotten to renew a security certificate on the server that makes your email work. For now, I see your options as:

Call Shentel at 1-800-SHENTEL and inquire politely for an ETR.
Sit tight and check your email occasionally.

I will update this page if I encounter new information!

UPDATE@9:30PM: Shentel Webmail is starting to open up again for people. M2W may have bought a quick 1-month security certificate to tide things over.

If you’re still getting errors from your email client (Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird), reboot your computer and see if things start working again!

UPDATE@7:30AM, 2/10/2023: Looks like everything is back to normal and functional again. But now we get to wait a month and see if this recurs on 3/13/2023. Mail2World, we’ll be watching you.

Mail2World’s 2022 Email Outage

January 14, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 15 Comments

On Wednesday, 1/12/2022, an email provider named Mail2World disappeared from the internet. They’re a modest company based in California that provides email for millions of people worldwide. They handle the email service for many different ISPs (including Shentel, Buckeye Broadband, and SRT), as well as for individuals and small businesses. Information on this outage was challenging to come by, so I’m going to chronicle what I saw and learned during this event, below.

Day One (January 12)

Around 7AM EST, all email service with Mail2World stopped. For the entire day, no answers were forthcoming. People calling their ISPs got only vague explanations: “Email is completely down, we have no ETR.”

Those that contacted Mail2World directly received an unprofessional response. I had hoped they would issue a press release or a Pinned Post on Facebook. But, ironically commenting on an older Facebook Post about “improving your chances of getting your email read,” Mail2World shared only a few vague tidbits. It was nothing informative (“Please be advised that we’re fully and diligently working on the current email service outage.”) and only aggravated their clients further.

Day Two (January 13)

With email still down, Mail2World told some ISPs to expect a 3PM EST recovery time. But that deadline came and went, and everyone had to face the fact that nothing would be restored this day.

A sharp-eyed Facebook commenter pointed out a breaking news story (alternate link) about a ransomware attack and suggested it might be relevant. I called the ISP mentioned in the story and got confirmation: Mail2World is their email provider, and a ransomware attack had brought down all of Mail2World.

Day Three (January 14)

The outage continued, but repair progress could be detected. Using DNS detection websites, people could see that Mail2World DNS entries were coming back online, across the globe. M2W had been completely absent from the world’s DNS servers for the first two days of this outage!

Repeatedly contacting Mail2World, I could only get the briefest assurance from M2W that no one data was compromised or stolen. And as more news reports about the ransomware attack emerged, that seemed to confirm that user data was safe through this debacle. Other ISPs started to report more details, as well.

After much teeth-grinding, Mail2World posted an non-update on their Facebook Page. Huzzah! And their sales website came back online, more progress!

Day Four (January 15)

Early in the morning, Shentel reported email service may be restored in the next 24 hours. By some estimates, that would be extremely quick and efficient, but not unheard of.

By mid-day, a rare few M2W email accounts were able to send out messages, although they arrived with security warnings and other malformations. Still, it showed further progress!

As Day Four drew to close, a few users reported in about email arriving to their Mail2World accounts. We couldn’t declare a complete recovery yet, but some people were able to send off a few messages, and verify that their old emails were once again available.

Day Five (January 16)

I woke to reports of Shentel (Virginia) email users happy with their restored accounts. Reports from other states (Indiana, South Dakota, Ohio) were varied, but most showed some signs of functionality. Other countries (Sweden, Australia, Mexico) also reported in about recovery, again varied, with some at full email ability, while others still hampered or limited.

This outage was mentioned over at Slashdot, but still hadn’t garnered any national or large-scale news coverage.

For my part, I recommended to anyone with fully-restored ISP email, to call into to their internet providers for a refund or credit. Since Mail2World would surely pay a penalty to their ISP clients for the outage, I reasoned that that money should be passed along to the ISP customers themselves. And my experience with many ISPs is that: If you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Day Six (January 17)

Today I found that most people worldwide have their basic M2W email service back. But there are some outliers that are still waiting, in Sweden or Mexico. These folks tend to be individuals that have enrolled in free email service directly with Mail2World. I can only guess that they are low-priority, and may have a much longer repair time than the blocks of email addresses repaired for the large ISP customers.

If you’re still waiting for an M2W repair, I can only tell you to hang in there, keep waiting and reach out to Mail2World repeatedly as time goes on. You can call them at +1 (310) 209-0060, visit their website, check them on Facebook, or find their Twitter feed. Good luck!

Epilogue (March 9)

Most everyone I know has moved on from this issue. But I am still disappointed. There are many questions left unanswered: What ransomware or criminal group caused this? Was the attack successful because of employee error or a zero-day exploit? Was the ransom paid or not?

For my part, I’ve pinged M2W for 2 months, through FB/Twitter/email/LinkedIn, asking for more info. And today, I got a phone call from one of their agents. He explained that the matter has been investigated, mitigated, resolved and put to bed. All informative reports have been finished and submitted… to the ISPs and involved companies.

He didn’t have any press releases or documentation for me. Or for the masses of email users out there. All of the “post-mortem” reports have been sent to Shentel, Buckeye Broadband and similar companies. And those big ISPs might not share that info with us little people, because, well… lawyers.

But this kind gentleman who called me reiterated: The ransomware attack did not expose anyone’s email info. He briefly mentioned that a 3rd-party vendor made a mistake and left a port open somewhere, and bad actors capitalized on the vulnerability. Now that all the forensics and investigation is through, M2W has improved their security and procedures to prevent this from happening again.

Shentel Email Best Security Practices

September 16, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 1 Comment

Many of my clientele are in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the home territory of an ISP named Shentel. And like many ISPs, Shentel provides free, courtesy email addresses to its subscribers. It’s like a mint on your pillow, except this mint needs some extra warnings on its wrapper and may give you some indigestion…

I can level a variety of criticisms against any ISP-provided email another time. For this post, I need to write on how Shentel customers can keep their email more secure. There are frequent scams targeting Shentel email addresses, and I want to help as many people as I can to tighten their defenses.

If you don’t have a Shentel email address, this post will not directly apply to you, but the overall security recommendations do. So please consider these points, and implement anything you are comfortable with!

Password Strength

I’ve helped with Shentel email users for almost 20 years now, and from the beginning, I’ve noticed Shentel doling out really weak passwords to their email addresses. In 2002, it was common for a brand-new Shentel email address to come with a 6-digit password. It was typically 3 letters (part of the person’s name), and 3 numbers (often the phone exchange of the user). To this day, I still encounter Shentel email addresses with these old, short passwords, like “abc465” and “joe933”.

If your email password is this short and simple, please change it now. Email thieves can determine such short passwords quickly, without hacking you or tricking you. There are password-guessing programs readily available on the dark web that anyone buy and use for this. And once they guess your password, they can use your email to start scamming your friends and family, or worse.

Changing your Shentel email password is easy, especially if you know your current password.

Go to the Shentel Webmail website and login with your email credentials.
Click the cogwheel icon to the upper-right.
When the Settings screen appears, click Password.
Type in your old password and then enter a new password on the next two fields.
Click Save and you are done!

Try to choose a password that is 8 or more characters long, and use a capital letter, a number and a special symbol. An example of a strong password is: Maverick20#21 .

If you do not remember your Shentel password, call Shentel at 1-800-SHENTEL and ask their tech support to change your password over the phone.

Recovery Options

If your password is strong enough, you should still visit Shentel’s Webmail website. Shentel is starting to implement Password Recovery Options for its email users, but you won’t see these if you use Outlook, Thunderbird or a Mail app to see your messages. You must go to their Webmail site!

When you visit that site nowadays, you will be prompted to set a recovery email and recovery phone number. Fill out and satisfy these items as best you can, and call Shentel for assistance if there’s any difficulty. These are important to do! If some bad actor invades your email next month, these will help you more quickly to regain control of your account.

Request 2FA to Be Implemented

The best security tool to prevent email abuse is 2FA. This stands for two-factor authentication, and adds an extra layer to the login process for an account. When you use 2FA, you first login using your password, and next have to enter a token or code sent to your mobile number or other security device. If someone steals your email password, the second step will block them from accessing your account.

Shentel does not offer 2FA on their email accounts and has a hard time answering my most basic questions about it. But many other email providers do offer 2FA. If you are going to stick with your Shentel email address, you might reach out to Shentel to ask them to consider adding this security feature. It would greatly reduce the number of hacked Shentel email accounts!

When In Doubt, Pick Up the Phone

If you receive an email, and something doesn’t seem right, take your hand off the mouse. Take a moment to think about what isn’t sitting right with you, and contact someone without using that email in front of you.

That means: if you want to contact Shentel, dial 1-800-SHENTEL or any support number that is printed on their bills. Do not use any number in the fishy email! Contact info showing in a suspicious email will often put you in touch with criminals. And those guys will be all too happy to pretend that they are with whatever company you say you’re trying to reach.

If you can’t reach the company for advice, call someone else. Talk to a trusted friend, police officer, church pastor or relative. Or drop me a line for a second opinion, I am happy to sound off on all things, legitimate and scammy! You’re even welcome to forward odd emails to me, and I will quickly write you back with my verdict of them.

Periods & Plus Signs in Gmail Addresses

July 19, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

An email address are generally case-insensitive, that is, it doesn’t matter if you use capital letters or lower-case. But Google has a few more tricks up its Gmail sleeve. Let me describe how you might use extra periods and plus signs in Gmail addresses:

Periods: In any Gmail address, periods are ignored before the @ symbol. So feel free to add periods anywhere in the username portion, if it makes your email address easier to read or understand.

As far as Google is concerned, joedfragmented@gmail.com is the same as joe.d.fragmented@gmail.com is the same as Joe.D.Frag.Mented@gmail.com . But one may look better than another on a resume, while another may be easier to relay over the phone, so choose appropriately!

Plus Signs: Plus Signs are also ignored in any Gmail address, along with anything that comes after the plus sign, up to the @ symbol. That means you can customize your email address with any words you like.

Betsy.NoSpam@gmail.com might be your address, but feel free to use:

Betsy.NoSpam+fundraiser@gmail.com
Betsy.NoSpam+whitehouse@gmail.com
Betsy.NoSpam+amazon@gmail.com

Messages sent to those extra addresses will still get through to you at your normal address. But the Plus Sign info will still be visible to you on the mail you receive. You can use this tool to know when someone is sharing or selling your info. And you can also use this in writing email rules!

Let’s say you give out Betsy.NoSpam+lottery@gmail.com for a contest. And after you didn’t win anything, you noticed a lot of spam coming in, sent to that +lottery-address. In Gmail (or your mail client), you could then write a Rule or Filter to auto-delete everything sent to that particular address.

Shentel Email Scam for April 2021

April 13, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Shentel Email users, beware the latest email scam coming to your inboxes!:

Phishing Email that shows the Shentel name

This message is not from Shentel! If you look closely, you’ll see it came from an odd address ending in “buckeye-express.com”. DO NOT CLICK the Update button, as it will take you to a deceptive website.

I’ll show that website here, without putting you at any risk:

Phishing Website that uses the Shentel name and logo

At a quick glance, this site looks legit, because they’ve stolen the Shentel logo, as well as the new Shentel Webmail icon. And the URL (web address) even has “Shentel” in it. It all feels very familiar…. But a Weebly.com address is something anyone can create, so this website was created by a bad actor. A true Shentel website would end in “shentel.net” or “shentel.com”.

If you received this message and went to this website, I hope that you didn’t fill out the fields. Anyone who types in an email and password on that site is actually delivering their logon credentials directly to some scammers. They will immediately log into your Shentel email at their true webmail site, and start abusing your address. I don’t yet know what these guys are up to, but email phishers often start emailing everyone in your address book with other ploys and lies.

If your email has been compromised, call Shentel immediately at 1-800-SHENTEL, and ask their tech support to change your password and inspect your account for other nefarious changes. And if you need any extra help, consider BlueScreen Computer as your backup option!