Once you are done reading this FAQ information, you may simply close this window
There are three main possible reasons for this, each discussed in detail below:
1. Our SMTP server requires authentication and you haven't set it up in your email client
This will manifest itself in Outlook Express as an error of the form:
The message could not be sent because one of the recipients was rejected by the server. The rejected e-mail address was 'joe@blogs.net'. Subject '', Account: 'fastmail.fm', Server: 'fastmail.fm', Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: '554 <joe@blogs.net>: Recipient address rejected: Relay access denied', Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 554, Error Number: 0x800CCC79
Note that the main error message is 'Recipient address rejected: Relay access denied', this is the error message to look out for regardless of the email program you're using. To fix this ensure that your email software is configured correctly. Detailed setup instructions for over a dozen different email clients are available here.
Once you've made these changes, try sending the email again.
To summarise for Outlook Express - Go to the 'Tools' menu and selecting 'Accounts'. Then select your 'fastmail.fm' account from the list and click 'Properties'. Move to the tab named 'Servers' and make sure the 'My server requires authentication' checkbox is checked.
Note that some older versions of Eudora don't allow authenticated SMTP, you can't send via FastMail.FM using these older versions.
2. Eudora has problems with automatic SSL detection
If you're using Eudora (5.0 or greater), Eudora can have problems with automatic SSL detection. To fix this, go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Options'. Select the 'Sending Mail' item. Change the 'Secure socket when sending' area from 'If available, STARTTLS' to 'Never'.
3. Your ISP blocks the SMTP port
This will manifest itself in Outlook Express as an error of the form:
The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'fastmail.fm', Server: 'fastmail.fm', Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10060, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E
Note that this is a general 'Socket Error', this most likely indicates that your ISP is not allowing connections through to the server. On the "Advanced" tab change your SMTP port from 25 to 587 or 26 to work around your ISP's block in this case.
Most email clients make it relatively easy to change the SMTP port. For Eudora, it's a little tricky. See this link for more information http://www.softhome.net/help/eudora-port25.html
If you received a message back from the site you were sending to, then please read this FAQ section. If you received a message back from FastMail.FM, you should read the message to see what it says. The message should look something like this.
This is the Postfix program at host www.fastmail.fm. I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned below could not be delivered to one or more destinations. For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster> If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the message returned below. The Postfix program <johncitizen@example.com>: connect to m1.example.com[10.1.123.123]: Connection refused
The final part of the message is what actually happened. The meaning of the most common messages is as follows:
<johncitizen@example.com>: connect to m1.example.com[10.1.123.123]: Connection refused
In this case, the other end refused our connection. This could be because the system is down, or because they are specifically blocking FastMail.FM. You should try sending the email again in a day or two, and if it continues to fail, contact the administrator of the other system (usually postmaster@<emaildomain.com>) to find out what is happening. You will probably have to do this from another account since you probably won't be able to send from fastmail.fm to the support or webmaster address either.
<johncitizen@fastmail.fm>: host /var/imap/socket/lmtpprox[/var/imap/socket/lmtpprox] said: 554 5.0.0 Unexpected internal error
This error message is a misleading. It actually means the user 'johncitizen@fastmail.fm' doesn't exist. You'll get this if you send from fastmail.fm to another fastmail.fm user which doesn't exist.
554 <joe@blogs.net>: Recipient address rejected: Relay access denied
This usually means you're not using authenticated SMTP. See here
If you received a message back from FastMail.FM, you should read this section. If the message is from the recipient's site, then look for a line like those below and read the details.
<johncitizen@example.com>: host m1.example.com[10.1.123.123] said: 550 5.1.1 <johncitizen@example.com>... user unknown
When you see the message 'host xxx said:', then this means we got an error response from the other end. The lines after this are what we got back from the other end, so you should contact the administrator of the other system if you don't understand what they mean (usually postmaster<emaildomain.com>)
In this case, the response was 'user unknown', which usually means that the email address doesn't exist on the remote system.
host aaa.aaa.aaa[111.111.111.111] said: 550 5.2.1 Mailbox unavailable. Your IP address 66.111.4.2 is blacklisted using SPAMCOP. Details: Blocked - see http://spamcop.net/bl.shtml?66.111.4.2. (in reply to RCPT TO command)
The above message indicates that the administrator of the mail server your recipient uses subscribes to the "Spamcop blocking list", a system that is described by Spamcop as "experimental and should not be used in a production environment where legitimate email must be delivered". Because they subscribe to this service, they unfortunately block legitimate email such as the message you sent. For more information about these problems, read this analysis of Spamcop BL by FastMail.FM founder Jeremy Howard .
If you come across this problem, please click here to submit a support request. We can then simply route through an alternate server to avoid the problem.
<senderaddress@fastmail.fm>: Sender address rejected: The mailserver used does not match the fastmail.fm domain Error: WS-13 (in reply to RCPT TO command)
This error message is due to the fact that excite.com/myway.com are arbitrarily blocking the FastMail.FM domain! We have tried multiple times to contact the administrators of these domains and bring this fact to their notice, but so far have failed to get a reply from them. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused due to this, but due to the fact that the blocking is at their server, unfortunately there isn't much we can do to lift the block at our end.
We have done some tests, and it appears that only the FastMail.FM domain is affected by this. You will be able to work around this by using a 'From' address other than one in the FastMail.FM domain, like that of an alias you are having, or your backup email address or that of a POP Link.
If the error received was blocked using relays.ordb.org, reason: Blackholed by ORDB, then the message was rejected because the sender was using an insecure email system. The email system they used is what is known as an 'open relay', which means that no security of any kind has been implemented for accessing the server. That means that 'spammers' (people that send millions of unsolicited advertising messages) can log on to that server and use it for distributing messages. Most commercial email sites, including ours, block messages from insecure servers because 99.9% of messages originating from them are spam, which is wasteful on resources and annoying for users.
Ask the sender to pass on this information to their system administrator or
ISP, including the following link:
http://ordb.org/lookup/?host=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
(where 'xxx' is replaced with the information in the original error message).
That link is to the sender's email server's entry in a database of servers known to be insecure and sources of spam. Because their email provider is on that list, their messages to hundreds of thousands of destinations will be bounced or silently ignored.
If the error received was content rejected, then the message was rejected because it either contained a probable virus, or it is a message previously reported as being spam. If a message is flagged as a possible virus incorrectly, ask the sender to zip it before sending.
If the error received was access denied, the sender or recipient has been blocked by the server. Possibly they have been reported as a spammer, or possibly they have been blocked by the mail abuse systems described here.
FastMail.FM has a self monitoring system on every server that tests every service every 2 minutes. We check every externally accessible port (eg SMTP, IMAP, POP, HTTP, etc both regular & SSL) to see that it's accepting connections, and responds to expected commands. If any tests fail, the system will page a developer to look into the problem ASAP.
Firstly, bookmark status.fastmail.fm. This is an externally hosted blog site that we post all server status updates to as soon as possible.
If there's nothing posted on the status blog, then in many cases, rather than the actual server being down, there may simply be some Internet congestion between you and FastMail.FM, or your ISP may be having temporary routing or proxy server problems.
A first step would be to try our alternate server in Singapore at http://sg.www.fastmail.fm. This server has been particularly useful for people in Asia/Middle East regions when they have had trouble accessing the main server as a way of routing around intermittent network problems. Note that you may receive SSL certificate errors when using this server. If you do receive an error message, just check that the SSL certificate is for www.fastmail.fm and accept it.
If the Singapore server does not fix the problem, you need to fing out where the routing problem is occuring. To do this, the simple approach for Windows users is to use FastMail.FM's diagnostic tool FastTest. We suggest that you download FastTest now. To use FastTest, simply double-click it after downloading, and follow the instructions. The output may not mean much to you, but if you send it to us using the FastMail.FM support system it will help us a lot!
If you can't use FastTest (it doesn't work on your system for some reason, or you do not use Windows), you can try the manual approach. Open an MS-DOS prompt (in Windows, by clicking Start->Programs->Accessories->MS-DOS Prompt or Command Prompt) or an XTerm (in Linux/Unix) or a Terminal (in Mac OS X) and type:
At the point where congestion occurs, you will see one or more '*'s. It is out of our control unless this point is the very last hop, to FastMail.FM. If the traceroute does not show all '*'s in the last line, also try the following commands from the command prompt:
If you are emailing the support team about a problem with connectivity, be sure to include the full results of all of these commands. To copy the output under Windows, drag your mouse over the output while holding down the button, and then press the Enter key to copy it. In an email, press Ctrl-V to paste it. Also, be sure to tell us if you are emailing us about a problem, whether you are behind a firewall, whether you are at work, whether you are using a modem or cable modem or ADSL, and any other information about your setup.
This problem is most likely due to an issue called "MTU size" with your computer or with one of the routers on your network.
Basically this is a low level network issue that would come into affect when you try and send large "chunks" of data to FastMail.FM (eg when you do a form submit via clicking on a button in the web-interface), but not affect the small amounts of data sent when you click on a link. This is probably only affecting FastMail.FM for two reasons:
The best solution is just to try and reduce the MTU size your computer is using. You can download a utility from here:
http://www.ivorysky.com/index.php/2004/09/25/p134/Windows-Update-Fix.html
Which will let you alter the MTU size your computer is using. Try chaning it to 1500 or 1450 and see if that fixes the problem.
Make sure your IMAP/POP/SMTP server name is mail.messagingengine.com. See here for detailed instructions on setting up different email software.
This appears to be a problem with IE 4.5 for Mac. Upgrade to IE 5.0 which solves this problem:
Click here to download from Microsoft's site
You may have a problem with your web browser. Try making sure you have the latest version of your browser (for Internet Explorer, go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com for updates). Try clicking 'refresh' or pressing F5. Try clearing your cache (Tools->Options->Delete Files, if you use Internet Explorer). Try closing and reopening your browser.
Our underlying email server is an IMAP server. In the IMAP standard, when you 'delete' an item, it isn't actually deleted permanently. Instead, it's simply marked as 'deleted'. This is often displayed in email clients as a crossed-out email. At this stage, the email still exists in your mailbox, taking up space. It's merely been flagged for deletion. To actually delete the item permanently, you have to 'purge' the mailbox. Most IMAP clients have an option in one of the menus or on the toolbar called 'purge'. This is what permanently deletes the email.
Unfortunately, most people find this a bit counter-intuitive. Most people are used to the Macintosh and Microsoft model of 'delete means move to Trash'. So in the web-interface, we have emulated this. When you delete in the web-interface it does the following 'copy message(s) to Trash, mark for deletion, purge the mailbox'. So this is why we don't display the crossed-out messages, since we don't generate them.
Sometimes it can happen that you have deleted a message with an IMAP client but have not yet purged it, and then use the web-interface. In the web-interface, these messages will then be shown as crossed-out in the Mailbox view. You can purge them by choosing 'Purge Deleted' from the 'Action' menu.
In Outlook Express, you can uncheck View->Current View->Show Deleted Messages to avoid deleted but not-purged emails appearing in your view. However you should purge them from time to time to avoid using more server resources than necessary and possibly going over quota.
Log into FastMail.FM using a web browser, and you will be able to see the message and read it without downloading the attachment. You can then download the attachment if required and even get FastMail.FM to compress it for you first.
Also, search for 'IMAP' in our FAQ (linked from the footer of every FastMail.FM screen)--there's information there about setting up your account to use IMAP rather than POP. With IMAP you would not have problems with large messages, because only the headers are downloaded and you can choose which messages you want to synchronize.
Finally, click 'Preferences' in http://fastmail.fm and choose 'Define Rules'. Choose the option to have large messages moved to another folder, to avoid this problem in the future.
See the item What does the 'Screen Size' popup menu do? on the 'Login Screen' to fix this.
We've had no confirmed reports of email being lost. Any cases of lost emails have been due to the following circumstances:
If you accidentally deleted an email, then it should have been moved into the Trash folder. You can retrieve the email by switching to that folder, and moving the email to your Inbox.
Please confirm none of these are the possible cause of the problem. If this does not resolve your problem, go to the home page and click 'Account problems', and follow the instructions. This will do a full rebuild of your account - after it is complete login and see if you can see your messages.
If none of these steps resolves your problem, or you have accidently deleted some message permanently, you will need to request a restore from backup. To do so, please follow these instructions.
You can restore all folders except 'Junk Mail'. We keep backups for a week, so make sure you send in your restoration request as quickly as possible. If you need to restore a deleted message that was in one of your folders in the last week, you can request a per-folder restore. To do so, follow these steps:
Note: During a restore, any message flags that you had applied to the messages will be lost. This means that the restored messages will lose their 'Seen' status and appear as unread mails in the folder.
Also the messages will be restored into a completely separate folder under a new 'RESTORED' sub-folder area. The restored folder does not count towards your quota, and is automatically deleted after a week, so you should make sure you copy all messages you need out of the RESTORED folder into a regular folder.
FastMail.FM uses some ActiveX controls on certain pages to provide an improved display and more features. In it's default setting, Interenet Explorer allows these controls because they are standard Microsoft signed controls which are approved and safe.
However if you customise your internet security settings, or more commonly, your work automatically sets customised security settings on your computer, then these controls may cause you to be prompted for every page you access, which is rather annoying.
The easiest solution is to add www.fastmail.fm to your list of trusted hosts. You can do this in Internet Explorer by:
With this done, you should no longer be prompted.
Unfortunately at the moment no. You can only delete the whole email. This is a feature we're working on.