StressLess wrote: »

When attempting to log into my ESO account either thru the game or via a web browser, it tells me it sent an access code to the email on my account.

I NEVER receive these emails at my email address, though I receive marketing emails and emails sent from ESO_Help@helpmail.elderscrollsonline.com without issue. It seems to only affect certain automated emails sent out by ESO.

Since I use my own domain (trapcity.com) and use a mail relay to funnel my email to the email box on my ISP, I can redirect the email to any other email account I have available. When I first signed up in January of this year this was how I got the initial access code to that I could activate my account and log in for the first time, by having all emails sent to both the ISP and the Gmail account.

Now that I'm being asked to login again, it's telling me I have to enter an access code and one is sent to me. Yet it never arrives in my ISP mailbox, and now it no longer arrives in my Gmail mailbox either (as it had in January), nor in a Yahoo.com email account that I tried as well. Both Gmail and Yahoo have a spam folder so nothing gets automatically deleted (unless you configure it too, which I don't).

My ISP email is thru a POP3 with a local client and is configured to NEVER automatically delete emails since I sort them into folders once they are downloaded. If the email makes it into my ISP's email box, then it makes it to my local client and would NOT get deleted for at least 2 months.

So if the email actually made it to any of the 3 mail services I tried (my ISP, Gmail and Yahoo), then it would show up in a global search of the account. These access emails NEVER arrive in any of these email boxes!!

This is an ongoing issue that affects more than just me since it prevents even logging into the support system as well!!!

While I'm positive I'm using the correct email that's on my ESO account, I was able to verify it by going thru the "Forgot UserID?", which will ONLY send you an email if the user details match the email that was entered, otherwise there is an error message that the details do not match. I entered a bad email and got the error. I then entered the correct email and got a notice that an email was sent to recover my UserID (which was never received BTW).

So I know and have verified that the email on the account IS correct. But without the login access code emails arriving into my mailbox, I can't log in via a web browser, I can't login to the game to play, and I can't EVEN log into the support website to create a support request!!

So I did a "Suspended / Compromised" ticket, which asks for information that is meaningless to request at that point such as Payment Method (I'm a Steam user so there's no Payment Method as my first purchase was likely to be that DLC pack they just sent me the email about, which lead to this forum posting) or answer to secret question (who remembers their secret question? isn't the point to ASK the question first so you can verify the answer?). But it does ask for your email address and details of your problem, which I did fill out and hit submit.

It created a reference code (160922-000845), though the support Knowledge base article says that an automated reply will be sent and you have to reply to that to get real help.

Note those words in that description on how this works that epitomizes the WHOLE problem, "automated reply".

I don't receive ESO's automated emails so NEVER received the blasted email I was supposed to reply too!!

Now it's important to understand how email on the Internet works. All email travels from the sender to the recipient and is relayed thru several different servers on the Internet. The majority of the servers that email travels thru are dedicated to simply moving emails to the next server in the chain and these servers handle MASSIVE amounts of traffic everyday.

In order to manage the traffic, the main providers of email relay services use tools like IronPort or Cloudmark to filter junk email from being relayed to the next server in the chain. It uses a variety of techniques for determining what to filter and what to let pass including blacklists, whitelists, bayes filtering, spam signatures, virus detection, etc.

A message so filtered is simply dropped in the middle of being relayed to the recipient and never even makes it to the mail service provider's system (though ISPs also use tools like IronPort or Cloudmark as well and can be THE problem as well).

This is why a marketing email or a tech support email could make it into my email box, and an automated email like a randomly generated access code doesn't. And it's also why it affects some people and not others (emails routed on a different relay that treats the messages differently), or why it worked with Gmail in January but no longer works in September.

But the most important takeaway is that neither the sender nor the recipient has ANY control over what gets dropped in the middle by the spam detection, and we already know empirically that not every email marked as spam or as phishing is actually spam or phishing!!

It's also why it needs to change!! You need to give alternatives like sending the code via SMS as an alternative for people having trouble with email (plenty of SMS gateways on the Internet to make this feasible), and a IOS/Android app like so many other companies do.

But I'm locked out of my account, out of the game AND even out of being able to get support for being locked out of my account or my game!!

So I'm appealing to someone here to help me...

Help?

StressLess wrote: »

I got a reply on that "Suspended / Compromised" ticket I opened and they insist that I need to change my email address. So I'm working thru that process now.

But this method of authentication NEEDS to be changed. Not only is it VERY unsecure (if they can hack your ESO account, wouldn't they have hacked your email first, duh...), but it simply doesn't work for many people due to ESO's automated emails being filtered by the email server backbone.

Very sloppy!!

They need to be able to send the code via SMS to a verified cellphone number (harder to hack) or they need to have a iOS/Android app (like most of their competition have) to allow for two-factor authentication that they FORCE on their customers.

Ok, force it on us, but at least make it reliable...

UPDATE- I was able to change to an alternate email address that is working (a gmail.com address) and I was able to get my access codes. So submitting a ticket with "Suspended / Compromised" worked and service was both quick and pleasant. ESO still needs to provide alternatives for receiving access codes thru other means than email and if they are going to force two-factor authentication then it needs to be reliable above all else or we are locked out of our accounts.