[antelope]

For about the last 5 days we have been unable to send email via VM from any computer in the house. All else was working correctly, including receiving emails. We're all using Thunderbird which has been working fine for ages and hasn't been changed recently.

However, the service status page for our area showed there was a problem with sending emails, so we waited for it to be fixed. That has now apparently happened, but still no emails could be sent.

So tonight, I browsed the troubleshooting pages and found that the SMTP address recommended for Thunderbird was "smtp.virginmedia.com" and not "smtp.ntlworld.com" which is what we've been using for ... well forever I think.

Now that I've changed this address, we can send email again, although the behaviour is slightly different. Messages are now sent to the sender as well as the recipient(s), whereas previously the sender didn't receive the message (which is as we want because Thunderbird stores a copy anyway).

So I have two questions:

1) Has the "smtp.ntlworld.com" address been removed (without telling us) and should we now be using "smtp.virginmedia.com"?

2) Is there a way of getting the old behaviour whereby sent messages aren't copied to the sender when using "smtp.virginmedia.com"?

Many thanks for any advice.