This page will outline problems that are frequently communicated to our committee, along with the steps you can take to solve the problem yourself or, or the information we need in order to tackle the problem.

The solution is one of the following two about 95% of the time. Try them in this order:

• Perform a password sync to make sure your credentials are the same between the website and all other services. You can perform a password sync here.
• If applicable, try to reconfigure (remove and then add again) the service according to this guide.

If the problem still persists, do send an e-mail to the Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again committee.

If your e-mails are not arriving (either e-mail sent by you or received by you) there can be a multitude of reasons. Please try the steps outlined below relevant for your situation before getting in touch.

Maybe the sender made an error If you're the receiver, check with the sender if they've really sent their e-mail to the right address. You won't believe how often e-mail adresses are mistyped.

Checking your SMTP server If you're the sender, please make sure you're using our SMTP server. If you're using another SMTP server, e-mail will probably never arrive. The @proto.utwente.nl e-mail domain is heavily secured with techniques to combat spam. Any unauthorized mailserver that is sending e-mail from that domain will usually be flagged as sending spam, and e-mails will be rejected before they're even delivered to the recipient's mailbox.

Testing with an independent service Test your e-mail address with this service. Enter your e-mail address and you'll receive an e-mail within 15 minutes. Please wait for these 15 minutes, e-mail can be delayed in a lot of places. If you receive the e-mail, e-mail delivery is working correctly, and the problem is probably with the sender. Then, reply on the e-mail you received. If this e-mail makes it back to the testing service, you'll receive another reply. If you get the second reply (and please give this another 30 minutes, 15 for delivery and 15 for return) e-mail delivery to external parties is also working, and the problem is probably with the recipient of your e-mail.

Caveats Some additional info that may help you diagnose the problem are the following.

E-mail can be delayed without notification for days. Usually you'll receive an e-mail from the so called Mail Daemon of a server if e-mail delivery is delayed or failed. These will get to you, usually in a few minutes to a few hours. However, they may also take a day to multiple. If you get a notification from the Mail Daemon stating e-mail delivery is delayed, there's nothing you need to do and nothing we can do. The mail server is still trying to deliver your e-mail, and is probably unable to do so at the moment because the recipient's mail server is unavailable. The mail server will try again for a few times.

If the Mail Daemon notifies you the e-mail delivery has failed, you can investigate. Most of the time the reason for failure is in the very e-mail that is notifying you of the failure. You may need to read through a bit of confusing logging to find what you're looking for. Common reasons include (variances) of the following messages: The email account that you tried to reach does not exist, Blocked or x is not allowed to send mail from y. If you report your problem, we will need this e-mail.

I still don't have a clue, what now? If you've tried all of the above, you can send an e-mail sysadmin@proto.utwente.nl with your problem and any related error messages. Without these error messages, there's not a lot we can do. If you have the subject of the e-mail and the time you were trying to send/receive e-mail, that will also be a great help.

If your e-mails are marked as spam, in general there is nothing much you as a user can do.

If you send e-mails that land in the spam folder of the receiver, check if maybe you've been sending too much e-mail on behalf of Proto that may be reported as spam by your receivers. Remember that if one receiver regularly marks your e-mails as spam, other users that use the same e-mail provider may also have your e-mails sent to their spam folder as part of the anti-spam learning techniques that e-mail provider may employ. Also, please make sure you're using our SMTP server. If you're using your own, your e-mail will get flagged as spam becuase of the anti spam techniques we employ.

If you receive e-mails directly from Proto, or via your Proto e-mail alias, that end up in your spam folder, always be sure to explicitly tell your e-mail provider that they are not spam. In Gmail, for example, there's a Not spam button you can click.

The HYTTIOAOAc however can investigate why the e-mail has been flagged as spam. For this, we always need the original e-mail as received by user where it was marked as spam. For this, you can send us the e-mail headers. This page from Google provides some short instructions to obtain the e-mail headers for some popular e-mail clients and providers. Please note that without these e-mail headers, there's nothing for us to investigate. You can send the e-mail headers along with some context to sysadmin@proto.utwente.nl.

After we've received the e-mail headers we can analyze them to figure out why and where it has been marked as spam. If this is due to reasons within our control, we will try to resolve the issue. However, most of the time, e-mails getting marked as spam is outside our control. We already correctly employ standard techniques to authenticate outgoing e-mails send via our mailservers like SPF, DKIM and SRS. Our mail server regularly sends a lot of e-mails, and that inadvertedly means that e-mail will get flagged as spam.