Email Service Alert - Xtra Email Issues

Email Outages

Wednesday 25th January, last updated @ 7:20 am

[For latest update see www.spark.co.nz/help/servicealert/emailservicealert]

XTRA EMAIL ISSUE

Some customers may be experiencing problems receiving Xtra mail when using an out of date third party mail client configuration. For Windows PCs this includes for example, using Windows XP with an Outlook product. For Macs this includes for example Outlook 2011 or older.

If you are experiencing these issues and are on an older operating system and/or email client we recommend upgrading to ensure the security of both yourself and your contacts.

In the meantime Xtra mail can still be accessed using webmail at xtramail.co.nz.

CAN YOU TELL ME SPECIFICALLY WHAT WILL / WON’T WORK?

Unfortunately, not without diving into quite technical detail. We can advise below what is and isn’t supported from a security perspective, but you may need to seek further information from your mail client vendor whether they meet these requirements or not.

Supported:

1024 and 2048 bit AES ciphers

TLS1.0 and higher protocols

Not Supported:

SSL2 and SSL3 are not supported due to vulnerabilities.

The RC4 cipher is also not supported due to vulnerabilities.

RC4 is the strongest cipher supported natively in Windows XP – therefore any mail client that uses the native Windows security suite (such as the Outlook products) will likely not be able to connect. Clients that use their own security suite still may if they support higher encryption standards (e.g., Thunderbird).

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