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Special Characters in Passwords

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Malcolm

Malcolm
Malcolm
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I use Thunderbird to access emails on several platforms including my PlusNet account. I changed a password recently on PlusNet to one that included the characters *, & and ^. Thunderbird then refused to send any emails from this account. Plusnet help were no use. I tried changing the password again to one with no special characters and things are back working. Is there a known problem with one of the three characters I used or is there a more general issue? many thanks Malcolm

I use Thunderbird to access emails on several platforms including my PlusNet account. I changed a password recently on PlusNet to one that included the characters *, & and ^. Thunderbird then refused to send any emails from this account. Plusnet help were no use. I tried changing the password again to one with no special characters and things are back working. Is there a known problem with one of the three characters I used or is there a more general issue? many thanks Malcolm

Chosen solution

The known problem is usually with the mail server software. There was a time when exactly the same was true with Hotmail. Their SMTP server did not accept anything by ASCII characters and no special characters. They also limited the password to 8 characters but their web site had no limit. Caused some chaos for a week or to at the time.

I would guess PlusNet fall into the same category. As most simply do not use any form of authentication to the SMTP for web mail. Some don;t even use the same SMTP servers. Web mail offers no clues.

It is possible something like an anti virus could cause issues with special characters, they integrate into just about everything. But I would guess the SMTP server just does not support the characters is a more likely scenario. We are also seeing a lot of SMTP servers that only support TLS V1.1 which was superseded more than a decade ago. SMTP just appears to be not important in the quest for customers.

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Matt
Matt
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Chosen Solution

The known problem is usually with the mail server software. There was a time when exactly the same was true with Hotmail. Their SMTP server did not accept anything by ASCII characters and no special characters. They also limited the password to 8 characters but their web site had no limit. Caused some chaos for a week or to at the time.

I would guess PlusNet fall into the same category. As most simply do not use any form of authentication to the SMTP for web mail. Some don;t even use the same SMTP servers. Web mail offers no clues.

It is possible something like an anti virus could cause issues with special characters, they integrate into just about everything. But I would guess the SMTP server just does not support the characters is a more likely scenario. We are also seeing a lot of SMTP servers that only support TLS V1.1 which was superseded more than a decade ago. SMTP just appears to be not important in the quest for customers.

Malcolm
Malcolm Question owner
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Hi Matt Thanks for that. I don't understand all of the technical details but it fits with what happened and removing the special characters that allows me to put into my passwords has solved the problem. Cheers Malcolm