After nearly 20 years of being in the private email business and answering 28,000 customer support requests last year, here at Hushmail we found that there are a few questions that keep popping up over and over again. So, we decided to compile the top 5 most-asked customer support questions about using our secure email solution (and the answers to them).
1) Why can't I sign in to my Hushmail account?
There are 2 reasons why you typically can't sign in to your Hushmail account:
• Wrong email address
If you see any of the following errors:
This means you are typing an incorrect email address. Double-check that you are entering your full email address when you attempt to sign in. Remember, Hushmail email addresses can end in @hushmail.com, @hush.com, @mac.hush.com, @hushmail.me or @hush.ai.
If you are a Hushmail Business customer, your address can end in your own domain, a Hushmail Business subdomain (e.g. yourname.hush.com), or one of our Healthcare-specific domains (@therapyemail.com, counselingmail.com, therapysecure.com, or counselingsecure.com).
• Wrong passphrase
If you are getting the following error:
This would indicate that you are not entering the right passphrase, or you are trying to log into someone else's account due to a typo in the email address. You may also be entering in the wrong domain for your account (if the username exists both in @hushmail.com and in @hush.com, for example). If you input an existing address which is not yours, you'll get the 'wrong passphrase' error, not the 'wrong email' one.
Remember: Hushmail passphrases are case sensitive. This means that 'p' is not the same as 'P'. If you are having difficulty accessing your account, make sure that you don't have Caps Lock enabled on your keyboard.
However, if you don't know your passphrase or can't remember it, then keep reading.
2) I lost my Hushmail passphrase, can I reset it?
Unless you already subscribe to our Passphrase Recovery feature on your Hushmail Business domain, then the short answer is no. Before you jump, let us explain why this is good news. We designed Hushmail this way as an added safeguard against unauthorized access to your email. Think about all the numerous high profile email hacks that have happened in recent history. These hacks take advantage of the weak personal detail verification method that other services use to reset your password. Gaming this system is probably the single easiest way to break into somebody's email account. Hushmail will not reset your passphrase just because someone else knows a few personal details about you (in most cases, these details will be readily available in your social media profiles).
In other words, we can't recover or reset your passphrase if you have lost it. If you have a Hushmail Premium subscription, we'll be happy to transfer the duration of your subscription to another account at no extra charge.
Now, as mentioned before, we offer a passphrase recovery feature for our Business accounts that makes it possible to recover an account when a passphrase is forgotten. If you want this feature, you can add it on to your subscription at any time. It's important to highlight that this is a preventive measure and it will not work if you first lose your passphrase and then activate passphrase recovery. In order for our passphrase recovery to be successful, you need to activate it when signing up for the first time, or reset all passphrases after you've activated it.
3) Why has my Hushmail account has been disabled?
The most common reasons why your Hushmail account could have been disabled are:
• Lack of activity in a legacy free account
If you have a legacy free account, then to keep your account active you need to sign in at least once every three weeks. If your account has been disabled for this reason, you can reactivate it by upgrading to Hushmail Premium. You'll get instant access to your old email and contacts if you upgrade within one year of your account being disabled.
• Creating a large number of free trial accounts
We do not allow bulk signup of free trial accounts. If you need to create a large number of accounts, Hushmail Business is better suited for your needs.
• Sending a large amount of email
Hushmail is intended for day-to-day personal or business email. If you're sending a large number of emails with similar content, our system will probably interpret that as spam. There are many solutions available through providers that specialize in the bulk sending of mail, such as MailChimp. Hushmail does not permit the use of its service to send Spam, so any customer who uses the service for this purpose will be permanently deactivated.
• Violating our Terms of Service
Our abuse prevention team works day and night to prevent people from using Hushmail for illicit purposes. We also have a number of automated security measures in place to detect and prevent spam and other types of abusive behaviour that is against our Terms of Service. If you are in violation of our Terms of Service your account will be permanently deactivated. If you think your account was mistakenly blocked from Hushmail, please contact our Support team and we'd be happy to investigate further.
4) Why am I not receiving email through my business domain?
Before you can receive email from Hushmail on your domain, you need to make some simple configurations to your domain name settings. You'll just need to set your MX records to point to our servers. MX stands for Mail Exchange, and these records route all the incoming email to your account.
You'll find more information on how to point your MX records to Hushmail here.
This change will not affect your existing web hosting at all; it's simply telling the servers where to look for incoming email. There's no need to change any other settings, or point your DNS records to a different address, or transfer your web hosting.
This applies to Hushmail Business accounts where you want to use a domain name you already own. However, if you are using a Hushmail Business subdomain (for example: yourname.hush.com) there is no configuration required on your part.
5) Why can't my credit card be charged?
We have put safeguards in place to protect us against fraud. The downside is that our fraud prevention rules can sometimes block legitimate credit card transactions on our system. This can occur when you are trying to pay for a subscription from a location that is far away from the card's billing address. To fix this, you can try the following:
• Disable anonymous browsing
Anonymous web browsing software and Virtual Private Networks will change your location and our system will consequently generate this error. You can try again after disabling anonymous browsing or do any of the steps described above.
If this solutions didn’t fix the problem, or if your question/issue doesn’t appear on this list, please submit a ticket through our Customer Support contact form. To save you some time, let us know if you’ve already tried any of these solutions without success!