A little later than planned, and after a month of hectic changes, reviews and audits we have finally flipped the switch and disabled all insecure login methods.

If you were previously fetching your email successfully and it no longer appears to be working then this will be the reason.  You need to adjust the configuration of your email client to connect securely for both send and receive.

Details of the hostnames/ports that should be connected to are available on the Tidymail Services and Port Numbers page. But the summary is that any existing insecure configuration should be adjusted to require SSL or TLS.

Most of our client configuration guides contain details on how to configure securely and we can advise for other client software not listed; just email us at helpdesk@tidymail.co.uk

As we noted in our original announcement back in December the security landscape has changed over the past 18 months, not only in its visibility and public awareness but also in regards to the importance of vigilance and good security practice.

 Security is a process not a checkbox.

We have always provided and encouraged the use of secure, encrypted communications to our servers but there have been recent events that have highlighted not only the importance of using encrypted links, but also ensuring that only trusted links are used.

As you may have read in various tech-press articles like this one configuring your email client to default to secure connections may not be enough to ensure the link was really secure since many clients when faced with blocked secure link silently fell back to insecure mode, allowing anyone in the path to read the id, password and email content.

We are pleased to announce that you can configure your account to ensure that even if your client falls back to insecure mode we will reject any connection attempt like an invalid account/password.

You can set these controls on your account by visiting the Email Security Controls page and setting the options to Yes.

You may also need to ensure your email client is set to use either “TLS” or “SSL” or “Encrypted” links and that it is connecting to the correct port.  Details of the preferred ports can be found here and configuration guides for various email clients can be found here

Please note that the third option on the page “Send from Authenticated Connections Only” is currently only of use for those remaining customers who are sending from permitted relay-ip address. This was the old mechanism for sending email where we simply trusted the IP address and is being phased out over the next few months.