Trouble with AT&T Yahoo! Email?

Question

Level 1

14 points

Trouble with AT&T Yahoo! Email?

My wife and I both use MacBooks and for years we have successfully used Apple's Mail application to poll several email accounts, including our bellsouth.net accounts.

Recently both of our Mail apps (on both computers) started to no longer properly log into our bellsouth.net email accounts, the error messages being most of the time that the password was incorrect (which it wasn't) or sometimes that the AT&T Yahoo! email did not support password authentication (which it does).

I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with AT&T and guess what... they said they couldn't help with the problem that it was third party software and that they could only refer me to the $15 per month ConnecTech people who would attempt to solve our problem. One person even said that AT&T was only going to allow the use of web mail; no more client apps. Another said that AT&T had put smtp blockers on all of the accounts to reduce spam.

Since I've set up quite a few email accounts--and can read and can follow written instructions--I resisted and tried to solve my own problem. I re-entered my password repeatedly in the accounts window. I restarted the Mail application. I restarted my computer. I corrected permissions. Mail continued to pop a window saying that my password was incorrectly entered, which it was not.

A curious little side point here: I noticed that if I opened Mail, let it give me the password incorrect error and then opened and logged into my bellsouth.net email (using the same password as was placed into my Mail app) it, meaning Mail, would then pull down my bellsouth.net emails! Go figure!

But the problem prevailed. I didn't want to have to log into web mail in order to poll that blasted bellsouth.net account. But it became clear that there was no way that I as a user was going to be able to get Mail to poll that bellsouth.net account on my own!!!

So I bit the bullet today and signed up with ConnecTech. Cost? $15 per month; one year contract mandatory; early termination fee of $120; and no guarantee that they could solve my problem.

But guess what: within minutes they had my Mail application polling my bellsouth.net account with no problem.

The problem is, that it was way too easy. They did the same things that Apple support and others suggested: re-entering my email password into my Mail app. I had done this 50 times but I watched as the tech, through screen sharing, did the "magic."

So you be the judge. What exactly was going on here? Why could they make the password work and I couldn't?

I'd be interested in hearing your theories and your stories of similar problems.

Posted on May 20, 2011 6:09 PM

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Answer 1

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

May 24, 2011 4:53 AM in response to John Hoge1

This morning when I fired up Mac Mail, guess what? It was unable to retrieve my bellsouth.net email. The reason: password rejected. So it seems like ConnecTech is going to get another call from me about the same problem that has been going on and on and on....

Surely someone knows what is going on.... Could this be what one agent referred to as an smtp block? If so, why isn't it bugging many hundreds of users.

Oh, BTW, when Mail failed to pull down my bellsouth.net email I just opened Safari and logged into AT&T (att.net) web mail (same password) and then clicked back on Mail and hit the button to get mail and viola it pulled down the bellsouth.net emails.

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Answer 2

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

May 26, 2011 6:15 PM in response to John Hoge1

Well, for those who might be interested, the problem continues! Connectech cannot seem to solve the password problem. Mac Mail is set up correctly (that last Connectech person re-created the account using the same PW, of course and it worked for almost 24 hours). Now it has failed again. The same error: the website rejects the PW even though it is correct. At this point they (Connectech) have elevated the case. Let's hope they can figure out what Mail can't seem to have the correct PW recognized on the my.att.yahoo webmail site....

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Answer 3

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

May 29, 2011 4:05 PM in response to John Hoge1

After having the password error continue to show up on the 27th and 28th suddenly it has disappeared today. Mind you I've done nothing on this end to alter Mail's settings, nor have I done anything else such as correcting permissions...

I did send ConnecTech screen shots of the PW errors that occurred on the 27th and the 28th along with an authentication not supported error window that also popped. I managed to include the server address, too, in my emailed messages to ConnectTech.

I was supposed to call ConnecTech back today and talk with a particular tech who was the contact on the elevated tech support request, but he wasn't in and the tech I did talk with said a lot of things. Among them was, of course, that my MacBook and/or Mail application was at fault and interestingly, that sometimes computers simply fail to work for no apparent reason! He said, too, that I'm not alone in having this password problem, that there were other email services that also tended to have this same PW error problem (he named them but I won't put them in here).

To me, personally, since my MacBook Mail works perfectly on my wife and my shared email account at bellsouth.net and has never generated a PW or authentication error, I find it hard to believe that my computer or the Mail application could be at fault. My thought is that the problem is somewhere on the Yahoo server or in some other piece of code that not right; but even that doesn't explain why my personal bellsouth.net email account would be working sometimes (like today) but fail miserably at other times. To me, that's just not how computers work.

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Answer 4

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

May 30, 2011 12:03 PM in response to John Hoge1

My personal bellsouth.net email continues to work flawlessly today, so I'll stop posting on this thread as long as it works.... Credit for the fix goes to someone somewhere, probably at ConnectTech or AT&T or more likely Yahoo! mail... IMHO.

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Answer 5

Jun 7, 2011 10:27 PM in response to John Hoge1

It sounds like what has been happening to me for months. In polling my three POP accounts, mail.app will tell me Bellsouth.net rejected my password. I hit Cancel, then tell mail.app to Get Mail, and everything's back to normal. It may happen once or twice a day for several days. Then it goes away for weeks.

I think it happens to a lot of users of mail.app. It sounds outrageous that AT&T told you the solution was to pay AT&T's ConnectTech operation a lot of money.

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Answer 6

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 8, 2011 3:55 AM in response to Stephen Throop

Clearly there are many users who get the PW error message and some that get the Authentication Not Supported error message, too.

I agree that it is outrageous that I have to pay $15 per month additional in order to get my email working correctly. But the connection problems were so frequent that I had no choice.

Again, I'll report that someone somewhere managed to write some code that fixed my issue. My wife's personal bellsouth account, however, still pops the PW error frequently, but she says that when she gives the PW as requested (usually only once but sometimes twice or three times) Mail does retrieve her email. She's willing to leave this issue alone as long as it doesn't get worse.

You know I don't write code for a living and don't administer any email server or anything like that, so I'll probably never learn what really happened to cause my problems with bellsouth.net email on my Mac. What I do know is that problems such as mine don't just fix themselves; someone somewhere did something that made my problems go away.

Too bad I have to pay an extra $15 a month to have solidly working email, but to me it was worth it.

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Answer 7

Jun 8, 2011 4:59 AM in response to John Hoge1

For me, the problem has appeared to fix itself several times, bothering me frequently for a few days and then not for weeks. It seems to affect AT&T-Yahoo POP users in the same region at the same time, no matter what client they use.

Yahoo POP uses SSL for passwords. Before decoding my password, I imagine they have to check with a Comodo server to validate my certificate. If the Comodo server is too busy to reply promptly, I imagine that could mean password rejection.

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Answer 8

Jun 8, 2011 8:54 AM in response to John Hoge1

I'm about 200 miles from Atlanta, and I've been having trouble in the last few days. Maybe we're affected by the same server. I don't re-enter my password for fear of making things worse. I hit Cancel, hit the button to wake up that account, and tell mail.app to Get Mail again.

I found the certificates by checking my keychain with Keychain Access. They weren't there before I moved from bellsouth servers to att.yahoo servers and started using SSL. The presence of the certificates led me to guess a Comodo server might cause intermittent problems.

Do you know people in your area who access bellsouth email by POP clients? I wonder if they're having trouble.

I'd use Keychain Access to delete my att.yahoo stuff, then re-enter the password for POP and SMTP through mail.app. If you deleted your certificates, I wonder if you'd be issued fresh ones automatically. I can find out by accessing my bellsouth account through my backup clone of my hard disk.

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Answer 9

Jun 8, 2011 9:51 AM in response to Stephen Throop

I was mistaken. The certificates are not on my clone, and I can access my bellsouth POP without them. Wherever they came from, I don't think they are email client authentication certificates as they say.

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Answer 10

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 8, 2011 10:15 AM in response to Stephen Throop

Stephen,

I just got off a 30 tech call with ConnecTech. The person who took my call tried several things and finally suggested that I needed to reinstall Mail and recreate all of my email accounts. I'm calling Apple to see what they say.

I'm getting very tired of this problem....

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Answer 11

Jun 8, 2011 10:38 AM in response to John Hoge1

John,

I've been talked into stuff almost as rash by ISP support reps who didn't know what they were doing.

You could create a new user account in OS X. Then you can access bellsouth through mail.app without any of the files connected with your current user account. It will be almost like reinstalling mail.app.

Another trick would be to download another client, such as Thunderbird, and see if you still have trouble. You could even use Thunderbird in a new user account.

I've had password rejections several times today. I assume they'll get their server straightened out.

Some have said they solved the problem by using the webmail interface to change their password.

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Answer 12

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 8, 2011 2:30 PM in response to Stephen Throop

Well, I've had Apple tech people suggest this before, but simply forgot that effective but low effort trick to problem solving. So, I've "archived and reinstalled" the system software as per Apple tech's suggestion for fixing the POTENTIAL problem with Mail (which is a part of the system software and not some simple application that we can reinstall by itself apparently).

You notice that "potential" is all in caps, because I am not sure that the problem is on my computer at all, but believe it lies with the AT&T and Yahoo! servers....

Of course I could be wrong. My bellsouth email is working okay right now, but if I were a betting person, looking at past experience, I'd have to bet that its going to FAIL AGAIN SOON and that the problem is at server level and that the Password Error has nothing to do with Apple or Mac or Mail or even Outlook on WindowsOS machines.

I'll be waiting for the next failure and I'll call ConnecTech again and again and again and again...

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Answer 13

Jun 9, 2011 5:01 PM in response to John Hoge1

Can you receive and send if you retry? Today Bellsouth has rejected my password perhaps five times so far when mail.app polled for messages. I just hit Cancel, hit the button to wake the account, and hit Get Mail. Once, it took two retries. Usually, the first retry works.

Occasionally, the AT&T-Yahoo SMTP server will refuse to send a message. If I say Try Later, then try immediately, it usually works.

In the past, I've been with ISPs whose mail servers could be down for extended periods. That's why I have free POP accounts with VFE mail and Gmail. Gmail keeps webmail records of my messages until I delete them on their site. VFE mail adds little advertising signatures to my outgoing messages. I find these things tolerable for very reliable services that protect me from spam. With two backup POP services, I can chuckle about troubles with AT&T-Yahoo.

Could this be a policy to scalp us with ConnecTech fees? To make us drop Bellsouth POP service?

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Answer 14

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jul 13, 2011 8:08 AM in response to John Hoge1

To anyone concerned with the password and authentication errors generated by the malfunctioning email servers on the AT&T Yahoo! bellsouth.net email accounts, I have to say that ConnecTech cannot fix these problems. No matter what they do, the problems keep coming back and back and back. I'm forced to move away from my bellsouth.net email that I have used for years. If all you want to use is webmail, I suppose you will be okay with the service they provide, but if you want to use an application such as MacMail it simply isn't going to work. I've had at least 10 sessions over the past three months with customer service and ConnectTech; I've read all of their notes on how to set up my accounts, I've re-done all of my accounts, heck, I've even archived and reinstalled my system, but the password errors keep popping up and so does, less frequently, the "doesn't support authentication" error.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over even though it doesn't work. In this case, I'd be insane to keep working with ConnecTech and At&T Yahoo! email....

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Answer 15

Jul 13, 2011 1:22 PM in response to John Hoge1

It was just a nuisance for me. Apparently it hit customers in the same area at the same time. The led me to believe the problem was with AT&T and not Yahoo. Continuing trouble in June was one reason I canceled AT&T.

I'd also lost my dial tone for 5 days and had intermittent DSL for 6. In recent years, it has apparently been SOP to make customers wait a week for a dial tone. The repairman told me he'd found two breaks in my line, in the trunk line on my street. He blamed lightning. I said there had been no storm the night it failed. There had been no front approaching when I went to bed at midnight and there were no puddles on the pavement when I awoke before dawn. He insisted that there had been a bad storm here that night and said they were working 12 hour shifts 7 days a week.

A year or two ago, AT&T told the FCC that it didn't like being obliged to supply landline service when wireless and cable were more profitable. Email troubles and long waits for repairs would discourage landline customers. ConnectTech sounds like a cash cow. Overtime can be profitable for employees, and AT&T can use it to justify higher rates. I'm glad I switched.

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