Mac mail with ntlworld.com and SSL smtp queries

[horseman]

A somewhat convoluted series of questions & observations concerning specifically the use of VM's email on legacy ntlworld.com domain on a Mac.

PRELUDE
OK that's reduced the readership by 80% so in the unlikely event that anyone remaining is interested sufficiently to comment &/or post suggestions then naturally I would welcome and appreciate their efforts.

However, before expanding on the laborious detail I should point out that the questions/observations are somewhat academic as the VM supplied email facility does "basically function" in terms of both the Mac client emailer and webmail access sufficiently such that I can't really justify distracting anyone from more worthy "non working" email scenarios that more deservedly require assistance…..

OBJECTIVE/DETAILS
Obvious first question: So if it's not completely broke- why expend any effort to try and fix it?

Basically because the primary (+14 secondary) email id's have largely been used for >12 years in conjunction with other external non VM email id's and:

1. Having survived the 2009/2010 VM > GMail migration, now looking at pro/cons of what could potentially happen with migration of ntlworld.com>virginmedia.com that still appears to be in "abeyance" for some existing users?
1a. Particularly as the "virginmedia.com" domain appears limited to 10 email userid's and not 14 !!! ?

2. Changes in "Mobile Mac" (name@me.com) email that are potentially linked (via forwarding) and require migration to new iCloud platform in June 2012 .

3. Whilst "spam" (and associated malware) are unavoidable there is one account that was recently endured spam addressed to someone else ever since the google email migration 2 years previous!. Recently earlier this week whilst enduring a prolific storm of malware (mainly) on one specific secondary email id I decided to analyse some email headers and discovered that one particularly family in Immingham appeared to be (in)directly responsible for 75% of the spam on that specific id. (I have even established their names,ages,postcode, alternate email address and even the car they had six months ago!).
3a. Yes I could tenuously attempt to escalate with the forensics obtained to date but I'm not convinced that even this evidence accumulated to date is sufficient to engage VM security even if they would be remotely interested anyway - no doubt having far bigger "fish-to-fry" elsewhere.

4. Tests to date appear to indicate that IMAP email configuration works as expected (and in accordance with VM manual email configuration docs [Note 4 below]) and even POP/POP3 incoming works, but POP smtp fails using any SSL option.

So the latter is the scenario in question and basically amounts to two questions:

a) Is the POP/SMTP(+SSL) configuration broken (and not currently compliant with VM config docs) due to a known issue and/or one currently being investigated?
or
b) Is this potentially a user specific problem?.

ENVIRONMENT DETAIL:NOTES
1. Using MacbookPro 7,1 on OSX 10.6.8 with Mac Mail 4.5
also tested on 10.7.3 (Lion) Mail 5.2 and tested previously on Tiger 10.4.11.
1a. using smtp.virginmedia.com + SSL works.

2. Only ntlworld.com domain tested as no current viable ability/access to "blueyonder.com" and "virginmedia.com" native email id's.

3. Not as yet tested on Win7,Ubuntu virtual images available on same hardware or Win XP SP3/Ubuntu on separate native PC.

4. Tests correlated with VM Help&Support site config docs >
Email settings for addresses ending in @ntlworld.com
4a. Given the low technical acumen I (debatably somewhat uncharitably) apportion to Level1 TS (particularly in VM's offshore location), I'm not prepared to risk loosing access to 15 VM email id's by formally contacting callcentre in order to "clear DPA" requirements for them to then "investigate"! . Hence the more "academic" posture of the question(s) and thus soliciting any similar experiences of others in the first instance.

As stated any thoughts welcomed….

[horseman]

Would appear that smtp.ntlworld.com SSL port 465 can be sporadically problematic and consensus is to use smtp.virginmedia.com instead. (or use smtp.ntlworld.com with unsecured port25!).
Looks like SSL/465 broke again on 7March…..
So it now seems pointless pursuing smtp.ntlworld.com SSL issues as I doubt there's little if any further authoritative detail available.

However there does seem some opportunity for VM to clarify their Help docs, specifically > Email settings for addresses ending in @ntlworld.com


Note* at bottom does allude to possibility of some errors:
*Note: Some customers who access their @ntlworld.com email account with certain clients, such as Outlook 2007, may need to switch off SMTP authentication - only if they're experiencing difficulties sending email using the settings given above. They can do this by unticking 'My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication'. Alternatively, upgrading to a different version of Outlook will resolve the issue.

but imo it would have been useful to also link to(or reproduce) the smtp alternative here >
Email settings for addresses ending in @virginmedia.com.
in order the user could retain a secure smtp alternative instead!

The ntlworld.com > virginmedia.com email migration project was backed out due to issues with off-net VM users. I can't find any evidence that VM are going to expend any effort to re-instate it either.
Which raises the interesting question (well at least to me) as to what happens to all the alleged "reserved" (ex ntlworld) user email id's on virginmedia.com domain?
I punted a couple of test emails to my primary and secondary virginmedia.com equivalents and interestingly didn't receive any bounces.
EDIT: Seems VM may just blackhole invalid email id's anyway rather than bounce? Presumably as a crude method to suppress spam/robots…..

Another potential test would be to try creating a new secondary virginmedia.com email address but as I'm currently using all 15(hence 5 more than the maximum allowed on virginmedia anyway) of my ntlworld.com email id's then I'm not yet in a position to try it. That's assuming you can create a secondary virginmedia id without migrating your primary id anyway!
Has anyone else experimented with it?