IMAP mail malfunction at Vodafone has lasted for days
Vodafone's IMAP mail server has only been usable with restrictions for almost a week. According to the company, there is a connection with iOS 18.
(Image: Pavel Ignatov/Shutterstock.com)
Vodafone has been struggling with a malfunction of its IMAP mail server for several days. Several readers of heise online have reported problems that have already existed for a week. Mail addresses with various domain endings are affected, including kabelmail.de and arcor.de. The company press office confirmed the problem at the request of heise online. The problems are therefore related to the release of the iPhone operating system iOS 18. By the end of this week, everything should be working again in top quality.
"With the rollout of Apple iOS 18, we are seeing a sharp increase in the load on the IMAP interface of our end customer email systems such as arcor.de, vodafone.de, vodafonemail.de, kabelmail.de etc. This increase in load naturally affects performance," explained the Vodafone spokesperson. The problems with the IMAP server were first reported by the company in the Vodafone community forum on September 18. At that time, it was recommended to use the Vodafone Mail app or the website, as the IMAP server was not usable at the time.
Currently still longer response times
IMAP is currently working again on all Mail User Agents (MUA), except for a small group of iPhone users who have not yet migrated to iOS 18 and where the user accesses via the Apple Mail app, Vodafone announced. Every other mail client on every other operating system works, but at the moment a little slower than usual: "Response times are currently normally around 10 seconds instead of 2 seconds." A service provider is working intensively to completely eliminate the restrictions.
Vodafone does not appear to be alone with the problems. There are various posts in support forums from users who apparently had problems retrieving emails from IMAP servers after the iOS 18 update. The exact cause of this is unknown. Initial investigations suggest that communication between Apple's mail client and certain IMAP servers is not working properly after login. This is apparently not due to the encryption certificates. The error may result in further attempts to communicate with the server, which can lead to impairments on servers with many accounts – as in the case of Vodafone's – due to the large number of requests.
(mki)