email

Kurt has a three-year-old Dell XPS laptop that he calls a "marvelous" computer. But he's been having trouble lately after a recent update and Microsoft Outlook. He waited to update to make sure that the updates were OK. 2004, for instance, was a nasty update. 20H2 has been a good one, but Kurt had to update 2004 before updating. But now he's getting send/receive errors requiring reinserting passwords for AOL, even though LastPass does it. Leo says that there are two servers he uses for checking email ... inbound and outbound. SMTP servers (outbound) will require a different port.

Greg has email messages that he can't throw away. When he tries to trash it, he gets an error message. He's using Apple Mail. Leo says the message is actually deleted, but the entry is persisting for some reason. Within the mail app, select the mailbox in question and rebuild it. It will rescan the database and rebuild the index. Here's how - https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/rebuild-mailboxes-mlhlp1227/mac

John bought a new domain name and wants to set up an email. How can he do it for free? Leo recommends going with Gmail. It's a great free service with excellent spam filtering. Microsoft's Outlook mail is also good. Then, you can tell your domain DNS listing to send an email that comes for you to that email service. In the settings for the domain name, there will be DNS settings and one will be for email. That's where you will input the forwarding address for your email. It's also called the MX setting.

Bill thinks his network has been infected because his email won't let him send anymore. It's completely missing. Leo says to make sure the SEND port is correctly configured in the email client (in this case Thunderbird). It's the SMTP server and it usually runs port 587. The scam came from "Spectrum" and "Thunderbird Help" that said he was having a driver issue. Leo says that's a scam. Email doesn't use drivers. It just uses an internet connection.

John doesn't get notifications from YouTube anymore, even though he selects the notification bell on the channel. Leo says to check YouTube settings to make sure that notification settings are turned on. Make sure email is turned on in your preferences. Check the spam folder to see if they're getting routed into spam from the inbox. Also, select PUSH. 

Carlin's email vanished from her Apple Mail email client. She uses MSN. But nobody has been able to help her get it back. The Geek Squad came out, installed Malware Bytes and scanned her computer, which Leo says is ridiculous since it has nothing to do with your email. Leo then says the first thing Carlin should try is to go to Safari and open up the msn.com website to check your email. Log in and see if it's there. 

Rob has Quickbooks 2020 and Gmail is blocking his ability to send an invoice. Leo says there's a link in Quickbooks that says "mail this invoice." It will launch Gmail in your browser. If it blocks it, it sounds like Intuit hasn't made a deal with Google to do that. Rob may also have to log into Gmail and authorize it. The authorization can also expire.

Joe got an email from Facebook saying his password has been changed. He changed it and turned on 2-factor authentication, but the password keeps getting changed back. Leo says that's a scary thought and he probably got bit by a phishing scam and that Facebook didn't send him an email at all. Leo says if it was legit, the first thing the hacker would do is change the email notification. 

Brad says that his company email looks to be compromised. Leo says it's more likely his email address has been "spoofed" by spammers, and it's really easy to falsify or spoof a reply email address. Sooner or later, they will move on to a new random return address. That's why everyone gets spam and even bounced back emails that don't work. So it's unlikely Brad's email address has been compromised, just spoofed.

Mike has a friend who's email got hacked and redirected to a Gmail account he didn't control. They were, however, able to get it back. Leo says to make sure 2-factor authentication is turned on as well. Then go to every account associated with that email and not only turn on 2FA but change the passwords.