Cableone (Gmail) To Verizon Blocked After 1/1/2013

[Hytec]

My brother (Verizon) and I (Cableone) have been e-mailing without a problem for more than 15 years. However, since 1/1/2013 my brother has not received any of my e-mails, although I am able to receive all of his. We have talked with our respective Customer Service personnel, but received no help because they are trained to resolve only local user issues, not system issues.

Does anyone know what protocol changes or security issues may have occurred between Verizon and Cableone (Gmail) to cause this problem? Is there some organization that I can discuss this problem with? Is there a troubleshooting procedure that I can use?

I'm asking for help on this forum because Cableone e-mail service is merely a user shell using Gmail for its core processing.

Thank you for any advice.

[n5bb]

Welcome to the EMD Forums, Hytec!

It's impossible that you have been exchanging emails between Verizon (founded in 2000) and Gmail (started first beta in 2004) for 15 years, so I'm assuming that you have more recently changed to those services.

Here are a few questions:

• When you send emails to your brother, what happens? Do you receive an error message or email failed delivery notification?
• Can you send email to other email addresses successfully?
• Can your brother receive email sent from others, such as from Gmail accounts?
• The most common causes for such problems are use of an incorrect email address or spam filters. So you both should carefully check these.
• I see from web searches that Cableone moved many of their email services to Gmail within the past few months, and that Verizon email seems to have problems from time to time with blocking certain other services.
• Are you using webmail or an email client (such as Thunderbird or Outlook)? How about your brother?

Bill

[Hytec]

Originally Posted by n5bb

Welcome to the EMD Forums, Hytec!

It's impossible that you have been exchanging emails between Verizon (founded in 2000) and Gmail (started first beta in 2004) for 15 years, so I'm assuming that you have more recently changed to those services.

Here are a few questions:

• When you send emails to your brother, what happens? Do you receive an error message or email failed delivery notification?
• Can you send email to other email addresses successfully?
• Can your brother receive email sent from others, such as from Gmail accounts?
• The most common causes for such problems are use of an incorrect email address or spam filters. So you both should carefully check these.
• I see from web searches that Cableone moved many of their email services to Gmail within the past few months, and that Verizon email seems to have problems from time to time with blocking certain other services.
• Are you using webmail or an email client (such as Thunderbird or Outlook)? How about your brother?

Bill

n5bb, thank you for your reply, and thank you for your welcome.

Apparently my brother switched to Verizon after 2004, so please accept my apologies for misleading information. That said, answers to your questions follow....
- No error messages received. In fact the Sent Box at the Cableone webmail server shows that all Verizon e-mails were transferred with no problems.
- Yes, he receives from all that he expects, though I will ask him if any are from Gmail accounts. I also exchange e-mails with many other services with no problems. My brother is the only Verizon address.
- The addresses are correct, nothing has changed from before 1/1/2013.
- Cableone switched to Gmail services in 10/1/2010. Other than having to reestablish my Cableone e-mail account to comply with the Gmail protocols, I have experienced no problems until 1/1/2013.
- We both are using embedded e-mail clients, I use Windows LiveMail, and he uses whatever is supplied with the current Apple desktop operating system.

As you imply, I also suspect that a Gmail or Verizon system update became active on 1/1/2013 causing contentions in one direction between the Cableone/Gmail and Verizon services. The problem could be as simple as having the 2013 datecode transfer cause a flag or link call to change, something often missed during Beta.

My hope is to locate someone who has experienced and corrected this problem. Failing that, to locate a technical support site or individual where I can report this problem to someone who understands the concept. Thus far my, and my brother's only contacts have been with customer service representatives who repeat meaningless platitudes displayed on their monitors.

[n5bb]

Please go into your Windows Live Mail program and check the following:

• Click the Outbox account at the left. If you see any messages sitting in your Outbox, then they have not actually been sent, and are still on your PC.
• Then look at the Accounts>Properties. Be sure to use the same account that you are using to send emails to your brother. Click the Servers tab and see what you have in the Server Information Outgoing mail (SMTP) field. That is the email SMTP server you are using to send emails.
• If the outgoing SMTP is accepting your outgoing messages to your brother (they are not sitting in your Outbox) and you are not receiving any message delivery error messages, then I think you can assume that the problem is most likely at your brother's account.
  • The Verizon email system might be treating your messages as spam. Since they are not rejecting the connection from your SMTP server, they should place such messages in a spam folder which your brother can examine. Unfortunately, a few email services may not play by the normal rules, or they may have some problems with their processing after Jan 1.
• Please ask your brother to check his outgoing From address settings in his email client. He might be sending you messages with a typo in his From address, so they are sent to the wrong address when you reply.
  • You should try sending him an email by replying to one of his messages, and also by you creating a brand new message and manually typing in his To address.
• If all of this fails to discover the problem: Please get your brother to find a friend who he can receive messages from (preferably with a Gmail account), and then perform the following test:
  • Your brother should send a single test email addressed to both you and the friend. Both addresses can be in the TO field, or one in TO and the other in CC. But don't use BCC.
  • When you receive this message (from your brother), you should click Reply to all in Windows Live Mail and in your reply message ask the friend to do the same (Reply to all to your email).
  • If all messages are delivered properly after those three steps (brother sends initial message, you send Reply to all, then friend sends Reply to all), each person should see two Inbox messages in their email systems after this process:
    • You will see two messages in your Inbox (one from your brother and one from the friend), and one in your Sent folder.
    • The friend will see two messages in their Inbox (one from your brother and one from you), and one in their Sent folder.
    • Your brother should see two messages in his Inbox (one from you and one from the friend), and one in his Sent folder.
  • If the only missing message is the email from you to your brother, then it's probable that the problem is at your brother's account, which may be treating your message as spam.
  • If any other messages are missing, then something else is broken.

Bill

[Hytec]

Bill, thank you for your reply.

I've enlisted the help of my son who has a Gmail account. I've asked him to attempt communications with my brother using the procedure that you suggest. I should have the results by this evening.

If the foregoing fails, I will attempt to access my brother's Verizon webmail account and examine his Spam folder and filter settings.

Regarding my account, nothing appears to have changed since it was last set up - the Outgoing server is smtp.gmail.com, port 465. The local Outbox is empty, and the Sent folders, both local and Cableone webmail, show all messages sent with no alerts or error messages. I doubt if I can access and examine Cableone's server within the Gmail system because it probably is a bulk pass-through of all e-mail packets without identification of individual user accounts.

It also is possible that Verizon and/or Gmail were made aware of the problem and have installed a solution. If so, my son's test would show this. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks again for your help, Hank

[n5bb]

It sounds like your brother's Verizon account is the cause of this, but it's best to test carefully. One last suggestion I forgot to make earlier is for your brother to temporarily disable the Verizon spam filter:
Verizon spam filter
If the Verizon spam filter is the cause of the problem, then try this:
Verizon whitelist request form

Bill

[Hytec]

Thanks, I'll give it a shot...very carefully.

[Hytec]

Bill, I found out my brother is out of town, so it may a few days before I can on this again.

Hank

[Hytec]

Bill, Apparently the problem has been diagnosed, a solution designed, a patch installed, and now all is right with the world...for the time being.

About 3 hours ago my brother's Verizon webmail account started receiving messages from my son's Gmail account. Then within the past 5 minutes the same Verizon account started receiving messages from my Cableone shell/Gmail account. (I was logged onto my brother's acct)

Apparently some person in the nether world of Internet communications was tasked to resolve the problem(s) and appears to have done so successfully.

Thanks for your interest and help, I certainly appreciate it.

Hank

[n5bb]

Glad it's working now. The best fixes are the ones which require no labor!

[Hytec]

Agreed, tho occassionally the "labor" pains can become a might stressful...