Is Cox limiting IMAP or SMTP functionality for those Cox customers who use a VPN or different domain?
I always use a VPN when banking or logging on to my billing accounts, etc. Given the hacking going on, a VPN is really essential.
I use Thunderbird as my email client and have for years. I receive and send GMAIL, my private email which comes from my private domain that I have hosted by a large hosting company for years. Until today, I have never had any problems sending gmail.com or "me@VeryCoxWearyMail.com" mail through Cox's SMTP server. When I tried it today, with my VPN on, here is what I got:
"The mail server sent an incorrect greeting: fed1rmimpo209.cox.net cox connection refused from 173.244.36.6."
The IP address belongs to my VPN company's Phoenix server.
On first blush, I wonder if this could be due to one of two (or more) things:
1) Is Cox all of a sudden only allowing emails to be sent through it's SMTP server from a Cox leased IP address. (in other words, not via my VPN)... or...
2)Is Cox prohibiting the sending of anything other than an email with a Cox domain through it servers. I hope this is not so, I pay over $100/month for Internet service and want to continue using Cox's SMTP server to send all of my mail, as I don't want to have to select from multiple SMTP servers in Thunderbird's settings each time I use a different email alias. Yahoo is doing this and it is a real problem...they do this to force you to use their Yahoo Mail app and NOT a client. I don't like ad-filled Yahoo Webmail and I am not enamored with Cox's "NEW" Webmail either. A separate email client allows rapid mass deletion of garbage mail without clicking boxes , etc.
Thanks in advance for your response.