Financial Institution Will Not Accept Bell or Sympatico E-mail Addresses

[dks]

My household received this e-mail (no, it's not spam) from a Canadian financial institution. 

According to our records, you have registered with (name removed) using a Bell.net or Sympatico.ca email address. The email provider for these addresses does not support them with TLS (Transport Layer Security), a widely adopted security protocol designed to facilitate privacy and data security for communications over the internet, such as email.

After November 30, 2023, you will no longer be able to send email communications to (name removed) from your bell.net or sympatico.ca email address. You will still be able to receive emails from (name removed), such as eStatement notifications, balance alerts and other important banking information.

We strongly encourage you to consider switching your email account to a service provider offering more robust security and encryption protocols. If you already have another email account with a different provider, you can update your email account in our records through Online Banking, by visiting a branch, or by calling our Contact Centre

While this is an inconvenience and the easier way is to use another provider, it does point out that Bell has been put on notice that there is an issue here. Does Bell have a response? 

[ECowan]

I just received a notice from my credit union (Alterna Savings) that it will discontinue sending emails to my @Bell.net account.

They state that @Bell.net and @sympaticao.ca do not support TLS (Transport Layer Security). Is this true?

Two years ago I went through the excruciating experience of changing email services. I chose Bell because I wanted a comprehensive, non-invasive, reliable provider. Must I change again?

- ECowan

[ZaneP · Accepted solution]

There's been discussion on this forum about TLS, and to my knowledge Bell hasn't made a definitive statement on it.

A forum member reported some time ago, that from their testing, Bell uses in-transit encryption (TLS, Transport Layer Security) on all outgoing messages.  But it appears that TLS is not used on inbound messages from domains other than Bell's.

This current problem may stem from the migration of Bell email from one platform to the next, over the years.

The issue may not be resolvedly Bell  any time soon. If the lack of TLS is causing problems for you with respect to email from financial service providers (banks, etc) then I highly recommend you subscribe to another email service for this purpose.

[dks]

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@ZaneP wrote:

There's been discussion on this forum about TLS, and to my knowledge Bell hasn't made a definitive statement on it.

A forum member reported some time ago, that from their testing, Bell uses in-transit encryption (TLS, Transport Layer Security) on all outgoing messages.  But it appears that TLS is not used on inbound messages from domains other than Bell's.

This current problem may stem from the migration of Bell email from one platform to the next, over the years.

The issue may not be resolvedly Bell  any time soon. If the lack of TLS is causing problems for you with respect to email from financial service providers (banks, etc) then I highly recommend you subscribe to another email service for this purpose.

---

Thanks. I was ware of the previous threads on the issue. And that is fine, but it isn't a response from Bell itself. Yes, as I said, the easy way out is to create an account with another provider, but that's not the point. Bell has not responded to the question or provided an explanation. Silence is never a good response in any given customer service situation. 

[ZaneP]

I don't disagree that Bell should respond, but meantime those of us who need a practical solution to this specific problem should go for it.  

[BellKris]

Hi there everyone.

We are aware of the communication to Bell.net and Sympatico.ca customers from Alterna Savings & Credit Union. Bell takes security very seriously and Bell.net and Sympatico.ca email offers industry-standard security protocols, including server-to-server email encryption, as well as TLS protocol version 1.2. We are reaching out to Alterna to provide them with our security credentials and seek to rectify their assertions.

[OttawaKate]

Canada Life, the new provider for civil service health care plan, has identified the same issue.   We had expected Bell to have top of the line security.  We are not looking forward to changing email providers but if we do, we will change out of other Bell services as well.  

[ZaneP]

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@OttawaKate wrote:

"... We are not looking forward to changing email providers but if we do, we will change out of other Bell services as well.  "

Canada Life is a very big player in the group insurance game, so I'm sure it has Bell's attention on this issue.

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[WelshTerrier]

That is very, very interesting, I have been with Canada Life for many, many years. I have not received any notification to this affect.

Bell is dealing with this issue....... only time will tell!

As a side point, Canada Life has a lot bigger fish to fry these days. The civil service health plan for all federal employees was recently moved to Canada Life & they were just not ready & set up to process this number of employees & the volume of claims. Stay tuned..... CTV News!

[User_user]

Please note that TLS 1.2 was released in 2008.  TLS 1.3 was released in 2018.  It is dissappointing to see that "Bell takes security very seriously" but isn't even implementing the latest standard.

[dks · Accepted solution]

It looks like Bell and Alterna have connected. This was their message today. 

Further to our communication of August 30th, 2023, regarding the use of Bell email addresses, we have now been made aware that Bell upgraded the outgoing email messages to TLS standards, and as a result, Alterna will continue to accept email messages from sympatico.ca and bell.net email addresses. Please disregard our earlier notice informing you that sympatico.ca and bell.net email addresses were not TLS encrypted. 

We sincerely appreciate your patience. The protection of our member’s personal information is important to us, and we are pleased that our members can continue to use their sympatico.ca and bell.net email addresses when communicating with Alterna.

[WelshTerrier]

Your problem is now resolved.  Please reference @dks reply from today. As I mentioned in my reply yesterday, “Bell is dealing with this issue....... only time will tell!” Kudos to dks!

[OttawaKate]

To be clear, I pointed out that Alterna Savings would not use sympatico accounts, and I received notification from them that Bell has resolved the issue - so that would seem to be resolved.  

Re Canada Life, it is the federal civil service health insurance plan which is not yet accepting sympatico email addresses.  (I know nothing of canada life insurance generally).   Canada Life replaced Sun Life as the provider July 1, 2023.  I have not heard back from my communication weeks ago with Canada Life. However given the pool of users I am hopeful that Canada Life will also accept sympatico soon.  

[ianwday]

Messages are being returned as (Undelivered): 521 Service unavailable

Other email accounts, such as Gmail or Microsoft, are receiving the emails successfully.

I've read here and on reddit that Bell is phasing Sympatico out. Is that true? Is this a TLS problem?

I'd like to understand what the problem is so that I can give people advice about their Sympatico email accounts.

[ianwday]

Note that my original question was "Financial company cannot send emails to sympatico.ca email accounts"