Cannot find outgoing server
Why can I not send emails in Outlook? I changed my setting a few months back and everything was working fine until abut a week ago?
Forum Discussion
I have had the same issue over the last few days, on multiple client platforms, and have been using the recommended client SMTP settings on all of them. I have spent several hours with Cox Support over chat and phone including "tier2" support but have not been able to reach anyone who can do anything beyond going over the client settings.
Interestingly, the problems started around the same time I received an email from the "Cox Communications Seciruty Team" that included the following text:
"The Cox Communications Security Team has detected suspicious activity on one or more of your Cox.net email accounts and your personal information may be at risk. To help contain this risk, we have temporarily blocked the ability to send email from your Cox.net account. For your additional protection, access using your current password will be disabled within 24 hours.
You must immediately reset your Cox password to remove this risk to your account. Once your password is reset, you will be able to access your account and send email normally."
I found that I had set up some Linux servers on my local network with postfix configured to use Cox for outbound email without SSL a while back which could possibly explain the "suspicious activity". I disabled the email services on these, and also reset my Cox password as instructed by the email, but this has not changed anything as far as being able to send email from other platforms.
One Cox Support person even told me that many people had received similar messages in the last few weeks, but that no action had actually been taken to prevent me from sending email as stated in the message I had received.
I work with computer support myself and have at least some sympathy and patience to deal with the process but still find it frustrating that it should be so hard to reach service staff with the appropriate level of knowledge. If I was routed to a technician who could look at SMTP server logs live while I "hit" them, and perhaps direct me to specific servers for troubleshooting, I feel this shouldn't really take that long to resolve.
