Customer not receiving email from her sister.

[trents]

One of my customers who uses Xfinity email as her primary account is not getting emails from her sister whose email account is through MSN. I've checked with the sister on the phone and she is sending them to the correct email address. To her knowledge, my customer is receiving all other emails that others send to her.

I had the sister send a test email to my customer's secondary email account (gmail) and it came through without a hitch.

The only real time security software my customer has in place is Windows Defender (on Windows 10) and the Windows Defender browser protection plugin for Chrome.

Seems as though her sister's emails are being filtered out for some reason but why and by what? The sister thinks (but isn't sure) her emails are not being received by a couple of other folks she tries to correspond with. But it is unknown if these other folks are also use comcast.net email. I've asked my customer to communicate with her sister and try to get an answer to that question.

I've also asked the customer to forward my comcast email address to her sister and have the sister try to send a test email to me but I'm waiting on that to happen.

What are the possible causes for something like this?

 

[Bustos]

Is it going to her spam folder by any chance? It’s happens from time to time with regular emails I get (newsletters, forum notifications, etc.) will end up in the spam folder from deleting a backlog of them from my inbox. My email account will see this as emails I do not read and believes they are spam. So, it will direct them to the spam folder until I direct it otherwise.

 

[trents]

No, customer said she checked SPAM folder

 

[Mr.Scott]

If customers sister is not getting a 'mailer daemon' kickback, they're going somewhere.
I would check the sister's machine for malware.

 

[trents]

If customers sister is not getting a 'mailer daemon' kickback, they're going somewhere.
I would check the sister's machine for malware.

Good thought. Do you think some kind of malware email redirect might be the culprit?

 

[Janus67]

That or their existing email/isp has a separate black list for that mail address suffix.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Good thought. Do you think some kind of malware email redirect might be the culprit?

Possibly.
Simply because it's not just limited to your customer. Other members of the family don't receive sister's emails either.

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That or their existing email/isp has a separate black list for that mail address suffix.

This is possible too, pending the location of the other affected family members.

 

[habbajabba]

Use a different email provider. Protonmail and Tutanota are both free. Any provider such as from your isp (or someone who makes and sells hardware-xfinity) is never ones I would recommend ever.

 

[trents]

Use a different email provider. Protonmail and Tutanota are both free. Any provider such as from your isp (or someone who makes and sells hardware-xfinity) is never ones I would recommend ever.

habbajabba, what's your reasoning there?

 

[Janus67]

habbajabba, what's your reasoning there?

Because if you change isps then you have a mess of email to clean up including passing along that change to your contacts, updating account emails, billing, etc. Ive never used an isp email for that reason.

 

[trents]

Good point, Janus67, but I don't think it has any bearing on the problem I posted about. Besides, these are senior citizen ladies who are not going to change ISPs. They don't like change.

 

[habbajabba]

Point is, isp's are not in business just so people can check their email accts. In the same fashion, manufacturers of any hardware you use are also not opening shop just so's you all can check your email accts. Remember AOL? I used their email service on dialup, for free, and soon realized I did not want to use them OR their free email accts.. It is similar to having a leash attached to your hardware under the guise of free email, get it here!. If you don't take control of your stuff, someone else will be more than happy to do so, and when problems arise, the last thing will be concern for what went wrong. It has nothing to do with changing ISP's, and everything to do with untethering your personal and private communications from entities who's job is NOT email. No different than the cellular carriers who pander themselves but insist you buy THEIR phone. You know, the ones that are carrier locked and full of crapware, for your convenience of course.

 

[Janus67]

Is MSN an email suffix anymore? Wouldn't that be outlook.com now and or Hotmail?

 

[trents]

It's a legacy suffix, same as hotmail. People who started accounts with those older labels get to keep them. I still use my "hotmail.com" account even though if I were to start a microsoft web mail account new it would be outlook live or something like that. They keep changing it to sound trendy.

 

[Janus67]

If she sends as outlook.com if that's an option does it work? Just trying to figure out where the stop is.

 

[trents]

Good question. I'll have to explore that with them. But how would she modify her sending address? Isn't that a fixed parameter that you don't have control over?

Could the problem be at the router level like a hack of the router's firmware or something?

 

[EarthDog]

Could the problem be at the router level like a hack of the router's firmware or something?

highly doubtful, no.

 

[Bustos]

You mentioned the sister felt others aren’t receiving her emails either. Has this been confirmed?

 

[trents]

You mentioned the sister felt others aren’t receiving her emails either. Has this been confirmed?

No. But I did confirm that the sister sent me an email to my xfinity account and I didn't receive it. To reiterate, I believe the problem only pertains to the sister sending email to comcast/xfinity email addresses. It's not that she can't send email to anyone.

 

[EarthDog]

Have the client call isp/email provider to resolve it is my take. May not be client side.