Mail (Mavericks) "The identity of "****.com" cannot be verified.

In Mail, Settings, Accounts.

Open any account, then where is lists the smtp server, click the chosen server and choose Edit SMTP Server List.

Within that list are smtp accounts you've probably used in the past.

An alternet method (easier): In Mail.app, under the Window menu, choose Connection doctor.

Your offending acounts will be listed.

Double-click an account to be taken directly to the smtp server list, where you may delete the smtp server entry.

🙂

I’m possibly typing this prematurely, but this is the first 5 minute period in the last three days that my screen has not had the accursed dialog pertaining to the issue with a certificate.

While the account no longer appeared on the problematic machine I did find it on another machine that I no longer interact with on a daily basis. When I removed it from the list of “Internet Accounts” in system preferences on the disused machine, it prompted me with a warning that the account would also no longer be available on machine A or machine B, where machine B is the broken machine and machine A is another machine that I had already remove the account from. I gleefully told it to delete it and returned my broken machine.

Hitting cancel on the dialog a couple of time resulted in its instant return. So, I did a “Force Quit” on “com.apple.internetaccounts” in activity monitor. I then went into “System Preferences” -> “Internet Accounts” and noticed that I had a couple of new disabled accounts that had previously failed to replicate, but not the problematic account that I had intentionally deleted.

I know from experience that visiting “Internet Accounts” after quitting “com.apple.internetaccounts” instantly restarts it and gives me the despised dialog. But this time I did not get the dialog, even though it did restart. It has also not recurred while I typed this up. I think I might have fixed it. Yay.

If anyone from apple is reading this please pass this on to your engineers. Being a software engineer myself, I feel pretty confident that it contains all the clues they need to recreate and fix the underlying issue.

Doh!!! It came back over night.

This is a real problem. I cannot afford to start the habit of connecting to machines that I explicately know I do not know, just to make a dialog box go away, but also find having living with the "Verify Certificate" dialog propetually on my screen as fairly unacceptable.

OK, once I successfully deleted the accounts it DID fix it.

It seems that on two seperate machines I had FAILED to delete the account. I would go into "Internet Accounts" and delete the account. But, I could think close and reopen preferences, open "Internet Accounts" and there it would be again. By freak chance I learned that if I also had the list of accounts open in Mail.app and deleted the account in "Internet Accounts" the account would be successfully deleted. When I had failed to delete the account before Mail.app had not been running at all, thus it may have been suffecient for me to have simply had Mail.app running....I don't know.

Once I successfully deleted the account, I did a force quit of com.apple.internetaccounts on the machine the dialog was popping up on have not seen the dialog return in 3 days. Thus I think the issue has been resolved for me. YAY!!!

Nobody from Apple is actively reading. Leave feedback at http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Remember many Mavericks plists are now cached. Log off or restart after major account changes of the type you describe to clear any caches.

I had this very annoying problem and it was happening about 50 times a day but the old account wasn't listed under Internet Accounts (or anywhere else). So for those who stumble upon this thread trying to solve the problem but the above solution didn't work (because you can't find the account) after much frustration I found the solution.

You need to first download Xcode if you don't already have it (or an equivalent plist editor).

Navigate to /Users/(your-username)/Library/

Open new FInder window and under the Go menu in the statusbar, click "Go to folder" and paste in "~/Library/SyncedPreferences" and click Go.

Open up the file icbaccountsd.plist in Xcode and you'll see a nested list of entries in a table.

What you want to do is go down into the nest (toggling the little 'open' triangles) via this path: Root -> values -> Current Accounts -> value

In this level, you'll see a bunch of entries with a jumble of letters and numbers.

What you need to do is toggle the open triangle for each of these and then the toggle for Settings inside it. This will reveal which accounts these are for, so you'll be looking for the one you deleted and whose server matches the one popping up annoying you.

So go back up to the list of jumbled letters/numbers, select the one containing the problematic entry and press delete/backspace.

Save.

Problem solved.

It seems that in certain situations this plist file isn't updated properly (probably during a sync conflict) and requires a manual fix. You may also need to apply the fix to all computers exhibiting this issue (I did just to be sure).

I hope this helps anyone else in my situation!

So go back up to the list of jumbled letters/numbers, select the one containing the problematic entry and press delete/backspace.

Save.

Problem solved.

This solved my problem. The account and its certificate weren't showing up in my Mail app or my Internet accounts after I deleted it, but the certificate warning error kept coming back and as soon as I dismissed the warning dialogue, it would pop back up again. I had deleted that email account about three years ago. I think it must have re-synched from an old laptop when I turned it on recently (to upgrade it to Yosemite beta). Thanks for the pointer!