Hi. My mac mail keeps switching its authentication from password to MD5 challenge-response. It seems only to be messing up one of my two email addresses, and it keeps changing from not sending to not receiving, all very arbitrary. I change it back to password, and have tried quitting mail, restarting the computer, and the authentication keeps switching back to MD5 challenge-response. Any ideas? Thanks.
IMAC (RETINA 5K, 27-INCH, LATE 2015)
Turn off the “automatically scribble on my mail server settings seemingly randomly” option in the mail preferences. Okay, I’m paraphrasing that slightly, but there’s really a checkbox in the server settings that does basically that. Automatically manage connection settings in Mail on your Mac - Apple Support Try disabling that, and see if the settings stick.
Turn off the “automatically scribble on my mail server settings seemingly randomly” option in the mail preferences. Okay, I’m paraphrasing that slightly, but there’s really a checkbox in the server settings that does basically that. Automatically manage connection settings in Mail on your Mac - Apple Support Try disabling that, and see if the settings stick.
A challenge-response MD5 hash of the password is preferable to authentication involving a cleartext password. Preferably all happening over SSL/TLS link and not over an unencrypted cleartext network link. MD5 is a better choice, if the server supports it. I’d find a replacement for any mail server that even offers unencrypted cleartext network connections much less requires those. Seems there’s either a problem with this mail server and its support for MD5 authentication, or maybe there is something else going on here.
Thanks! I actually prefer the paraphrase.
This may have done the trick. Of course, right before I made this change, things started behaving again.
I'll see if it still works tomorrow.
Do you have any idea why MD5 challenge-response would be designated? I've seen some old forum posts that say it's more secure...which I guess it is if you can't send or receive emails.
Thanks again.
Thanks for all the info.
I failed to add that both these email servers are POP, which seems to add a whole layer of confusion to macmail, especially on my iphone.
Obviously, IMAP is usually preferable to POP.
There’s not always a choice, my website server email is POP. Wish things could be standardized...
goldwolf01 wrote:
Wish things could be standardized...
The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
You’re back to paraphrasing again.
Macmail switching to MD5 challenge-response
