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Email Recovery?

JulesJH
Hello, I've been tasked with recovering emails that were undelivered due to somone tampering with a client's cPanel in GoDaddy. I contacted GoDaddy, and future emails should be okay. However, the message I got from GoDaddy was: "The reason your emails were not working is because your MX entry in cpanel was incorrect. When using anything other than cPanel to check your emails you need to ensure that the entry is set to "remote exchanger". As a courtesy I have updated this setting for you and you should see your email working within the next 72 hours." According to my client, there will be a backlog of about 2 months emails to recover. Could someone please tell me how to do this? Many thanks. JulesJH

Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • rpvw
    I have to start from the premiss that you are talking about emails sent TO your client, and not mails FROM your client. An incorrect, or lack of an MX record will not stop your client from accessing their mail box by either POP or IMAP (or webmail). The RFC standard used to be that when attempting an email delivery, if the MX record could not be found, the sending host would then attempt to send the mail to the IP that the recipient address domain name pointed at. I have no idea if that still holds true, nor if cPanel (or GoDaddy) ever behaved in that fashion. The bad news is that if the mails were not already in your clients mail box, the likelihood is that only mails sitting in current remote server mail queues will ever get delivered, and most mail queues only hold mail for retrying delivery events for around 5 days. Even the above will depend on the reply that the sending server got when initially trying to send the mail - you may never be able to recover any of the emails that were sent prior to correcting the MX records. There is a small remote chance that mails were delivered to a catch-all account and may be sitting there - you should ask GoDaddy support for help with this. I suspect your client will have to contact everyone they were expecting to receive emails from, and ask them to re-send them.
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  • JulesJH
    rpvw, Many thanks for your reply. Seems like the chances of getting the emails back are pretty remote... I'll advise her of your information, and see if she wants to go ahead with contacting GoDaddy again to see if there is a catch-all account. Best, JulesJH
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  • cPanelLauren
    Hi @JulesJH I'm sorry to hear about your client's issues with email.
    However, the message I got from GoDaddy was: "The reason your emails were not working is because your MX entry in cpanel was incorrect. When using anything other than cPanel to check your emails you need to ensure that the entry is set to "remote exchanger". As a courtesy I have updated this setting for you and you should see your email working within the next 72 hours."

    From this response from GoDaddy it sounds like your client had their emails set to be delivered to a remote server. If mail delivery to that remote server was successful then you won't be able to recover anything (unless your client is able to access the remote server) This leads into what @rpvw noted:
    The RFC standard used to be that when attempting an email delivery, if the MX record could not be found, the sending host would then attempt to send the mail to the IP that the recipient address domain name pointed at.

    Depending on the configuration of the MX If mail is undeliverable and (not bounced for a specific reason like spam etc.) the sending server should attempt to resend. Pending the mail queue on the sending server is left untouched it should retry in the event it wasn't able to reach the destination for up to two days. Unfortunately, in this case I doubt that will occur due to the situation. More than likely those emails are lost and not recoverable. @rpvw I don't believe the sending server would attempt to send to the A record for mail undeliverable to the mx - checking here seems to confirm that
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  • rpvw
    I don't believe the sending server would attempt to send to the A record for mail undeliverable to the mx - checking here seems to confirm that RFC 5321 - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol section 5 - I have to be honest that I have not been following it since 2008/2009
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  • cPanelLauren
    Things change so fast/frequently too it seems.
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