No email sent to activate two-factor authentication

You need to somehow get email working on your web hosting for WordPress. It’s currently not.

This email is designed to ensure you can get emails, otherwise you would be locked out. Try something like:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/easy-wp-smtp/

and link up your gmail or such email address to send emails. Once that’s working, repeat the process of resaving your login protection settings to see if you get the email.

Hope that helps!

Hi Paul, I had been replying to you by email rather than coming to this page. I just now noticed I was sending to a no-reply email address.

Please bear with me for how long this is. I believe all the information may be necessary to get to the bottom of the problem.

I used Easy WP SMPT as you suggested and it didn’t help. I tested my wp_mail by using a test I found at a blog that had me set up a /mailtest.php file with some code in it. That test showed my wp_mail was working correctly and I received an email from using the test.

I knew you were especially busy with support and I thought I’d check into some other issues I had noticed with my emails before continuing with this one.

My contact form was not sending all the necessary emails out. I worked with my web host support to get that straightened out and it’s working perfectly now. During everything we tried, one of the problems that came up was I’d get a 550 non-delivery email. It had to do with having two subject headers. I worked this out with support and I no longer get the non-delivery emails when testing the contact form.

So now I’m back to testing 2-factor authentication. I set it up again and received two 550 non-notification emails. They’re copied below and at the bottom of each email in bold text you’ll see they were triggered by Simple Firewall. The second one was a notice that someone (it was me) logged into my dashboard. I have never received a notice like that from Simple Firewall before. I do receive notices like that from WordFence regularly.

I thought it best to contact you rather than my web host support since it *seems* related to Simple Firewall only. Do you have any ideas why this is happening?

Thank you,
Gail

The two 550 messages:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]
(ultimately generated from [email protected])
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host outbound.mailspamprotection.com [184.154.208.34]:
550 Messages should have one or no Subject headers, not 2.

—— This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ——

Return-path: <[email protected]>
Received: from [184.154.22.154] (port=48425 helo=www.staugustineloveslions.com)
by serv01.siteground327.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.80.1)
(envelope-from <[email protected]>)
id 1ZGRg8-0003ph-65
for [email protected]; Sat, 18 Jul 2015 07:57:20 -0500
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2015 12:57:20 +0000
To: [email protected]
From: “Gail of St. Augustine Loves Lions” <[email protected]>
Subject: Email Sending Verification For: https://www.staugustineloveslions.com
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.2.7 (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Email Sending Verification For: https://www.staugustineloveslions.com
X-Mailer: PHP/5.6.10
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Before enabling 2-factor email authentication for your WordPress site, you must verify you can receive this email.
This verifies your website can send email and that your account can receive emails sent from your site.
Verify Link: https://www.staugustineloveslions.com?wpsfkey=6394c727c5016ba3a9308ed994cff6c6&wpsf-action=emailsendverify
_______________________
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]
(ultimately generated from [email protected])
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host outbound.mailspamprotection.com [108.163.220.50]:
550 Messages should have one or no Subject headers, not 2.

—— This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ——

Return-path: <[email protected]>
Received: from [184.154.22.154] (port=34175 helo=www.staugustineloveslions.com)
by serv01.siteground327.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.80.1)
(envelope-from <[email protected]>)
id 1ZGRvy-0004Bg-4b
for [email protected]; Sat, 18 Jul 2015 08:13:42 -0500
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2015 13:13:42 +0000
To: [email protected]
From: “Gail of St. Augustine Loves Lions” <[email protected]>
Subject: Email Notice: An Administrator Just Logged Into https://www.staugustineloveslions.com
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.2.7 (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Email Notice: An Administrator Just Logged Into https://www.staugustineloveslions.com
X-Mailer: PHP/5.6.10
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

As requested, WordPress Simple Firewall is notifying you of an administrator login to a WordPress site that you manage.
Details for this user are below:
– Site URL: https://www.staugustineloveslions.com
– Username: [email protected]
– IP Address: 108.90.29.218
Thanks.

Hi Gail,

That’s great that you have taken the time to debug your web hosting first… it is often a hosting issue that causes such problems.

It seems these error messages are 550 errors with the same message you described – 2 subject headers. You said you sorted it out before with support, it looks like whatever is causing this is still happening, but this time for our plugin.

The Simple Firewall plugin calls the wp_mail() function with the correct parameters. It doesn’t do anything strange and it follows the WordPress codex documentation. If you’ve had this error before with double headers for the subject, and it’s happening again, you’ll need to work with your support to find out how they fixed it the first time around and apply the same principle here.

Just because the Simple Firewall is having problems sending email, it doesn’t mean the Simple Firewall plugin is the root cause of the problem. If it were, every single user of the plugin would report email sending issues such as this. These errors you’re having are down to your hosting configuration and I’m at a loss to help because I wouldn’t know where to start to debug your hosting.

I wish I could help more. If you can find something that directly points to errors caused by the firewall plugin, I’ll happily take a look, but it seems your hosting has issues with email from the outset and the Simple Firewall is only showing symptoms of this, not the root cause.

Sorry I can’t be of further help, and thank you for your efforts to debug… I think you need to raise this with your hosting support for further assistance.

Thanks!

Thank you Paul. I wasn’t really sure where to go for help on this. What you say makes perfect sense. Have a great day.

Hello Paul,

My web host support went into my dashboard to do some testing of the 2-factor authorization.

What she concluded from her reports was I needed to change my email address in general plugin options to my yahoo email address rather than have it set to go to my forwarder gail at staugustineloveslions.com She felt the authentication process did not allow for forwarding.

I made the change and also changed my User Management/notifications to my yahoo address. Strangely, per the message at my dashboard, Simple Firewall is still sending the 2-factor emails to my gail@ address. This is confirmed by the 550 non-delivery messages.

I tried using a different browser to change my settings and run the test, but that didn’t help. Please be assured I tried and checked everything multiple times.

Do you have any idea why I’m unable to get my changes in settings to work? Is there some setting in my WP dashboard that would override the firewall settings? Would Easy WP SMTP have anything to do with this?

Whether my web-host support is right or not about making the change, I’d like to get this straightened out so I can work further on this.

Thank you,
Gail

Paul – I tried to edit the above, but I wasn’t allowed because it’s too old.

Just to update you, I deactivated all my plugins, including Easy WP SMPT, and changed to a standard theme. The issue persists. Thank you.

I think perhaps then that your smtp plugin is to blame.
You could try another plugin:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/view/plugin-reviews/wp-mail-smtp

Hi Paul – thanks so much for your reply and especially on a weekend.

The only thing is I still have the same problem when I disable the SMTP plugin. Indeed, I still have the problem when I disable all plugins and change my theme to a standard one.

It also doesn’t explain why Simple Firewall says its own system sent the email to my gail at staugustineloveslions dot come address when I have it set up to send to my yahoo address.

Thank you!

Paul – I’ve decided to forget about this. I’m fine without 2-factor. I like your Simple Firewall very much and I’m happy with it the way it is. I’ll just leave it as it is and chalk it up to some kind of glitch in my WP dashboard or something. Thank you! Gail

Besides, there are so many other great login protection features with this plugin no one is getting in my dashboard!!

I have discovered a potential problem with certain email services that can’t handle colons “:” in the subject lines. Really very silly, but the latest release has removed colons from all email subjects in the hopes to resolve that issues.

Would you like to test it?

Hi Paul,

I updated to the new version of Simple Firewall and tried 2-factor. I’m sorry to say I still got the email with a 550 error. It does and always has included a verification link and I imagine I could still set 2-factor with it. I just never tried it since I was worried I may have problems with the authentication if I ever need it.

The 550 error has something to do with having 2 subject headers and I ran into this same error trying different email programs for my site so I suspect the problem is on my end.

I should also tell you, I’ve learned malware did something to my email accounts. It just dawned on me now this could be related.

My sincerest apologies for your efforts in looking into this problem if I’m the only one having it and you’ve been looking into it because of me.

Thank you,
Gail