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Melody ScottFlag for United States of America

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Emails not coming In

Hi, My client uses Thunderbird 31.6.0  on Windows 7. Recently he realized he is not getting emails that he knows have been sent.

They are not in his junk folder.

His POP server is prodigy.net.mx, we went onto web-mail and looked through his spam folder, but they aren't there. This happened a few weeks ago, and emails started appearing again spontaneously, but the emails that went missing remained missing.  He can only access email on his laptop via thunderbird or on a web interface, he doesn't use a cellphone or any other device but his laptop.

Is there any way we can attempt to track these down? Thanks.
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John
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Check and see if the ISP changed the port and security settings. Incoming should be 995 / SSL or something similar and outgoing should be 587 / SSL or TLS or something similar. Whatever the ISP says settings should be.  These settings are in Outlook, Data Files, change account, More settings.

In the same area, check the Outgoing Server and make sure it has been correctly set (common error).
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If the email us not available in the web interface nor there are no errors on his thunderbird connection, checking the junk mail log on thunderbird should do be to confirm it is not moving messages directly to trash. When that is confirmed as not being the culprit, there is nothing you can do but:
1) wait until all the sending servers that had issues transmitting to prodigy.net.mx
2) wait until prodigy.net.mx servers that might have huge queues deliver the messages delivered to them
3) your clients mailbox nay gave exceeded the allotted size, exceeded their quota and no new emails were being accepted until recently when message previously received have reached the tone limit and have been deleted, or the user increased their quota.
4) check the server side spam filtering configuration if any to make sure a setting there did not lead to the deletion if incoming messages.

In the future, should one stop receiving email as one is accustomed, a test of an email to oneself from am external source could help confirm the issue is not with their mail server.

Did the senders who sent, received bounce back/NDRs?
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Ok, let me make a couple of things clear, to be sure there is no confusion.

1. He is receiving some emails. I am on the same server, and I can send him an email. But he is in a position to know that he should be receiving emails from certain people, and they are no coming in.

2. The same thing happened two or three weeks ago, and eventually his email starts up again. BUT, and this is important, he never receives those missing emails. He starts getting his regular amount of email again, but the emails that went missing never arrive.

OK, having said that, the port is 110, and that's what we have set up. His outgoing mails are set up on SMTP on gmail.

 junk mail log on thunderbird should do be to confirm it is not moving messages directly to trash. When that is confirmed as not being the culprit, there is nothing you can do but:
We don't have tools>junkmail controls>logging
1) wait until all the sending servers that had issues transmitting to prodigy.net.mx
I don't think this will help, because as I mention above, the emails never arrive.
2) wait until prodigy.net.mx servers that might have huge queues deliver the messages delivered to them
Again, please see above.
3) your clients mailbox may have exceeded the allotted size, exceeded their quota and no new emails were being accepted until recently when message previously received have reached the tone limit and have been deleted, or the user increased their quota.
I will check this -wouldn't it send a warning email if he was exceeding his size?
4) check the server side spam filtering configuration if any to make sure a setting there did not lead to the deletion if incoming messages.
I will check this, too, thanks.
Double check your ISP requirements. Port 110 is going out of use (so is port 25) . They may have changed it and have not completely phased it out which could cause your problem. I have several mail suppliers and none of them use Port 110 anymore. The one machine left using Port 110 had a similar issue until I switched it over to Port 995. You need to know what the ISP is NOW saying about connection parameters.
Ok, I checked out everything I could find on the server end:
Automatic logout: 720 minutes
Keep a copy of sent messages: Always
Auto-refresh frequency: Every Hour

I can't find how big his inbox is, but he has three pages with 64 messages, so it doesn't seem excessive.

There are no filters, and his blacklist only contains email addresses which begin:
MAILER-DAEMON@

Thanks for any other advice you can give.
Hi, John,

Thanks, I'll do my best. I'm in Mexico, so it's a little hard to find that info.
Everything that I can fins says it is port 110. I'll call their support line and see what they say.
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John
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ok, thanks- I am talking to English support now, it's prodigy.net.mx, so may be different.
Thanks, they confirmed it is 995 and SSL. Hopefully this will solve the problem.
@mel200  - Thank you and good luck. Using new Port and Security has solved email issues for me in past and I hope will help you as well.
The port of retrieving email is one thing that as John pointed might somehow end up on an out the loop server that has minimial access to the repository of the stored data which is rather difficult to envision but possible. I.e. a set of mailserver heads have a common storage that is replicated with another set.  The 110 functionality remained on a group that had replication issues.

you having the same provider eliminates everything and is not a sufficient test to identify what might be causing issues for people sending emails from the outside.

Having said that, the 110 being the sole issue would mean that when the user logs into the webmail interface, the message should be there, unless he is somehow routed to the same set of servers/storage being accessed.

Something else is going on that is on the provider side.