For various reasons I have two email accounts with different ISP's ... Comcast and Verizon. For some reason when I'm at home, where Verizon provides my connectivity, I can't send email using my Comcast account. Yet when I'm at work or elsewhere, I can send using either. Why? And what can I do?
Welcome to another casualty in the war against spam. ISPs are starting to use various techniques to limit the use of their mail servers to only their clients.
Depending on what your ISP allows, you may be able to reconfigure. On the other hand, while it wasn't the last straw, it's one additional reason that my former ISP is my former ISP.
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The techniques ISPs use fall into a few buckets:
There are probably other techniques in use as well.
I'm going to assume from the question that you can receive email on both accounts, so I'll limit myself to sending issues. With all those possibilities, and with all the possible ISP combinations, it's difficult to present The Answer. But I can at least go over a couple of things that I'd try.
The normal configuration might be to have each account send email using the SMTP server provided by that account's ISP - by that I mean your Verizon mail account will use Verizon's SMTP server, and the Comcast account would use the Comcast server. Instead, try configuring the problem account to use the other accounts SMTP server.
For many years sending email via SMTP required no authentication. Especially when you're connected via the ISP's provided lines such as dialup or broadband, that was enough to "authenticate" that you are authorized to use the ISP's servers. Many still operate that way by default but impose some simple restrictions such as requiring that the "from" address be something that the ISP controls. Quite often the ISP will lift restrictions as long as SMTP authorization has been successfully used. Try configuring the account that's not working to use authentication - either "same as receiving account", if that's an option, or with explicit account/password information.
And it's even worth combining those two approaches: try sending using the "other" accounts mail server, and try adding authentication to that configuration as well.
If efforts so far have been unsuccessful, it might be worth asking one of your ISPs if they even support what you are doing. Some might allow you to send using a different port - something other than the SMTP standard port 25 - or they might have alternate approaches. Or they might not help at all, and you'll know it's time to find another ISP.
Related:
Ask Leo! - Why can't I send mail from my hotel room?
Ask Leo! - What is POP? Or POP3? Or a POP account? And what about SMTP?
Article C2523 - January 17, 2006
when I try to send an email through my yahoo account it just keep saying loading and never loads.
Posted by: tiffany ruffin at November 19, 2008 1:35 PMI CHANGED FROM VERISON TO COMCAST BUT I CAN NOT GET E-MAILS AT ALL. THANK YOU
Posted by: FRANCES SELIGMAN at January 3, 2009 3:19 PMI cant send mail from my yahoo account!! When i send it states mail sent but the receipt wont rcv it and it wont appear in the sent items. Plse fix it, its been happening for a month now
Posted by: Khosi at January 28, 2009 6:20 AMhope you can help. i am onvista and sometimes when i go to a site to send in (a contact us} prompt, i get this display from windows that it no longer allows HTTP. it offers a fix, but i have tried several times to comply but no-go. i previously had hotmail and changed to yahoo hoping it might help..nope. thanx for any input.
Posted by: Gary Albertson at February 18, 2009 7:33 PMwhen I try to send an email through my yahoo account it just keep saying loading and never loads.
Posted by: jolien at March 6, 2009 9:09 PMthen direct "comt" error send/not send ..and when I klick don't send everything Disapear..
hello
Posted by: Phil Smith at March 10, 2009 2:15 PMAll of a sudden, I am unable to send any semblence of a large email size (above 49kb)using Windows Mail (Vista) and with Comcast. Internet is fine and I can receive just about any size email.
Usually get an error 0x00CCC0F. Have tried Thunderbird and same problem.
need help!
hello
Posted by: notorious at March 22, 2009 10:03 PMmy problem is i cant compose any mail from my emailid
i cant send pic from my yahoo accont
Posted by: erica at April 9, 2009 3:53 PMI can't send email to my aol address from my cell.All the other addresses from yahoo and comcast work o.k.I can even sen an email from my mobile yahoo to my aol email but can't send directly from my cell phone to aol.Please help!!
Posted by: joe fiebert at April 10, 2009 9:24 PMcant sent emails. they keep coming back as a failure
Posted by: michelle at May 17, 2009 11:14 AM