AT&T Yahoo changes their POP email system
I have an email account through AT&T/Yahoo and last night I noticed that I could no longer download my mail into Thunderbird! I was going crazy trying to figure out why and this morning I found out.
Why they did not send this message out ahead of time is beyond me but here it is:
We're making some security improvements to your AT&T Yahoo! service. These changes will affect members who send or receive email from a desktop or mobile client program, such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora, Apple Mail, or Thunderbird.
- Open your email client program.
- Locate the email account settings for your particular client.
- Change the POP server to pop.att.yahoo.com.
- Change the SMTP server to smtp.att.yahoo.com.
- Check the option labeled Use an encrypted connection (SSL) and change the SMTP port to 465.
- Check the option labeled Use an encrypted connection (SSL) and change the POP3 port to 995.
- Confirm the above settings then click OK.
That's about it. Good customer service would have been sending out an email notification a week or two in advance of this change. I have to wonder how many tech people like me were getting phone calls from relatives to fix their email.
Strange…I haven’t experienced this problem and I have their service.
What do you use for an email client? This only affects email client software not web-based email.
I use Mac OX Mail
That’s really bad customer service. How could they not give you the information beforehand? Or run both servers together for a while? They just gave their helpdesk guys a lot of work to do !!
I use Windows Eudora 7 and since I received the email (yesterday morning), I’m still able to send/receive email with the ‘old’ settings:
SMTP: smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com
Incoming: pop.sbcglobal.yahoo.com
Hmmm.
ATT Yahoo have sold their member e-mail address to spammers — shortly they will introduce “graphical advertising” …………………spam spam spam spam spam
I got the same email. Am using Eudora 6.1. Still working as of now, but I spent several hours in chat rooms & on phone to various ATT people, none of whom knew anything about Eudora. There is no setting for anything to do with a port # in Eudora. Couuldn’t find any in Outlook Express 5, either, but I can’t use OE because I have software written to interface to Eudora.
ATT person in chat room said change would not be required til August (when in August???).
This is just plain incompetent on ATT’s part.
I wonder what the “security improvements” are that ATT/Yahoo made. I found nothing on it on the ATT.Yahoo site. Does anyone know what they are?
Pran
I work for a company that has AT&T Yahoo! as their business ISP. They received several e-mails about this. I, as a personal user, received no e-mails. Apparently AT&T thinks they only need to inform their business users.
Steveweb: Are there any options to use SSL? Most programs know to switch to those ports automatically if you use SSL.
Well, if Zac’s going to try to be helpful, the least I can do is try some of this stuff. Haven’t done anything up to now because old email settings continue to work with Eudora 6.1/WinMe. On the other side of the problem, changes at Amazon have rendered my email kinda useless, so it won’t matter much if I wake up one day & have no email.
1st experiment:
leave everything else alone & just change these in the
tools/options/getting started menu:
pop.sbcglobal.yahoo.com –> pop.att.yahoo.com
smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com –> smtp.att.yahoo.com
sent & received a few emails from my netzero account,
so I can do this much without doing any damage.
But, this is only half of what att said to do.
A for the ‘Use an encrypted connection (SSL)’,
the only thing I see in Eudora 6.1 is in the
tools/options/checking mail menu,
where there is a field called
‘Secure sockets when receiving’
that has 4 options:
1. Never
2. If Available, STARTTLS
3. Required, Alternate Port
4. Required, STARTTLS
whatever any of that means…
(It is currently set on ‘If Available, STARTTLS’)
There are no options to actually set any port #s.
The only thing I can see to do at this point is to hope
this solves the problem, which will be the case if att
stops sending me emails saying I ought to do something.
While looking for other solutions, I discovered IE6/Outlook can be downloaded & used on machines as
old as Win98, which I did not realize. I don’t want to
do this on my current machine, since there are strong
rumors that you can’t get rid of IE6 once you install it,
but I could set up a second machine when I run out of
other disasters to work on.
Other discoveries while thinking about mail…
Netzero seems to be offering DSL for same price as att,
but it may be the same product with different artwork,
so no guarantee it wouldn’t have the same problem.
Also stumbled across something called YPOPS, which is
supposed to be able let you access yahoo web mail as
though it were POP3, but I haven’t read the fine print
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.
I use Outlook 2002 and can’t send email now. ATT CS is blaming Outlook. I didn’t have ANY problems until ATT made their changes. I just spent over an hour with CS – glad they are getting paid by the hour. Unfortunately, I am PAYING them for this lousy service.
I received a notice of the mail server change from ATT several weeks in advance – I think one email notification 2 or 3 weeks prior and then another one. So I had plenty of notice.
I use Outlook 2000 and had no problems. Well, I did end up with send mail problems a week after the change and worked with ATT who said they were resetting things (?!) to my router and such which didn’t quite make sense to me. But I did end up turning off my wireless router which got things working again.
When I tried to change the settings on my mom’s Outlook 2002, could NOT get send mail to work. Could be Outlook 2002, could be the fact it’s Vista, who knows.
Regarding Zac’s comment about receiving the notification as a business ISP that might be true – I did have some domain hosting with them at the time (no longer).
I also use Outlook 2002 and can no longer send or receive mail via any of my 3 accounts that get forwarded to Outlook (since AT&T made this change a few days ago). I spent 2.5 hours on the phone with AT&T customer service and still no success. The old settings don’t work for me either. I was also told to call Microsoft and when I asked exactly what changes AT&T had made so that it might make more sense to Microsoft, the support person decided to try to help me (unsuccessfully) for another hour!
Well, I received the notice and changed e-mail settings as requested. Now, for the first time in 10 years, I am receiving spam into Outlook Express. I went back in to both the AT&T privacy policy/unsubscribe options and also into the Yahoo settings to make certain the marketing preferences were unchecked – they were. So bad when my e-mail has stayed clean all these years. So, could the OP be correct in saying AT&T has sold e-mail addresses to spammers. Very frustrating.
i recieved 2 emails telling me about this.. might be in your junk..
Iuse Windows Mail in Windows Vista. I made the Pop3 and SMTP changes two monts ago. I had no problem until July 31. Then starting Aug 1 it started taking long time – more than 60 seconds – connecting to email and the sesson would time out and ask if I wanted to wait. I would say yes and them it may connect or error message would pop up. Called AT&T and tech support blamed Windows Mail software!
I use Windows mail in Windows Vista. I made the changes to POP3 and SMTP two monts back. No problems until Aug. 1 then the connecting time started exceeding 60 second and the sesson would time out. I would continue and the messages may get retrieved or an error message wouls pop up. Called tech support and was told that it must be a problem with Windows mail. Tech support person dis not even know that there was such athing as Windows Mail!
Has anyone successfully used Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 with YPOPs! 0.9.5.1 on Windows? I’m trying to set this up for my legacy pacbell.net account but I can retrieve only new messages. Thunderbird/YPOPs is not giving me access to the Sent (and other) folders that I normally have access to on the YahooMail Web site. Thanks for any suggestions.
I think the email you guys received came from spammers/hackers. I recommend you change back your email servers to the old settings, because now they have the ability to see all your emails. Is anyone getting duplicate emails? I did not touch my settings and I’m still able to send receive long past the “supposed” deadline.
RE: AT&T and Eudora email not working
Eudora users can check the “Eudora Forum” for information on how to set the Eudora properties so Eudora will work with AT&T servers. The information offered there appears to have helped many users who are using Eudora 7.1.0.9 and earlier versions – and resolved the problem. I am a Windows Eudora 7.1.0.9 user on an XP computer. I carefully followed the instructions on the Eudora Forum and still got a daily message saying that I must make changes to my email client or I would not be able to use AT&T service. On the “Eudora Forum” a post by Ziemba dated 6-21-2007 gave good instructions on how to set up Eudora properties. To find this post, do a search using “Eudora Success with AT&T Yahoo SSL POP/SMTP servers”. There is also a post in this Eudora Forum thread that has screen shots that show how to accept SSL certificates.
After making the appropriate changes in Eudora properties boxes, my email worked for my AT&T address but not for my 3 other emails that were hosted with a different web hosting company. After several days of trying to make this work, I finally discovered the problem. AT&T is my ISP and a different company ipower.com is my web hosting company for 3 domain names. The problem was that my web hosting company server and the AT&T servers were not talking to each other. The web hosting company was also in the process of changing to a secure server. This change began in October 2007 and 4 months later they were still changing customer accounts to the new server. One of the domain names was transferred to the new ipower.com server in late January 2008. When this occurred, the email for that domain came through with a yellow padlock icon showing in the connecting box that shows at the bottom of the Eudora screen when Eudora is told to get email. This was the clue. I called ipower.com and asked them to quickly migrate my other two domain names to their new secure server. The order request went through the next day. This totally resolved the problem. Both the non-working email addresses came through showing the yellow padlock icon. the daily emails from AT&T telling me to change settings stopped.
Before the problem resolution, I could get mail via Eudora if my AT&T mail was also open at the same time. However, the email coming from the web hosting company was taking a long time to come through, and many times I got the message “connection timed out”. This message was showing for 2 of the 3 email addresses that I had with the web hosting company — and the yellow padlock indicating a “secure connection” was not showing for the two email addresses that were showing the error message “connection timed out.” These two email addresses had not been transferred to the new ipower.com secure server.
Summary statement: If you are using AT&T and are having a problem with your email software that is something other than Outlook, do a search with your email software name and version and the words “AT&T Yahoo SSL POP/SMTP servers”. You may find a user forum with instructions that will help you get your properties settings to work.
If user forums instructions do not help, it is possible that if you are using an email address that originates from a non-AT&T server, that the address may not work with the AT&T server. AT&T does have instructions on their site for setup for several types of email software. AT&T absolutely will not help you with Eudora and say that they do not support Eudora.
Hi, I got the same notice from AT&T re; my email client settings, ssl and ports. I am resistant to change the port settings, as Norton Internet Security 2007, which I use, only scans ports 25 and 110, the default client settings across the board, and not ports 465 and 995. So I changed the pop and smtp server addresses, but left the port and ssl settings unchanged. I can still use Outlook Express, BUT I keep getting nag emails from AT&T. I strongly suspect it has to do with AT&T routing all their email traffic through government data-mining servers, and the security of the gov. servers. It started about the same time their all to eager co-operation with the fed’s illegal data-mining program was outed. It takes the email traffic out of the reach of programs that might keep track of email traffic through the traditional default ports, such as security programs used by many corporations, and keeps security programs like Norton from monitoring the security of incoming and outgoing email. I get very little spam. So far. I would not, however, doubt that AT&T is selling us all to the highest bidder. They are criminals, one and all.
Was running windows mail on Vista. worked properly for months and months.
Received email from AT&T saying their security enhancements were about to be enacted and as much as calling me an idiot for not heeding their numerous previous warnings. Previous warnings of course were not sent to me actually. This is like whispering “stop or I’ll shoot”.
I have not yet downloaded the Microsoft service pack to Vista-that may cure some things, but so far, windows mail under vista does not function with at&t required SSL.
Heeding an AT&T website note that Thunderbird is a supported email program, I have installed thunderbird and so far can not get that one to work either.
I don’t know how many are in the same boat as I, but it has to be thousands. I could say misery loves commpany or re: AT&T this company loves misery !
My email quit working when Bellsouth switched to ATT/Yahoo. ATT support is below terrible. They never heard of Thunderbird or Eudora. They want me to pay them to fix their problem.
Been using Thunderbird for years and now it gives :invalid user and password. ATT Yahoo webmail they switched me too works fine. I set everything up like they requested. What a waste of time! I have been on hold now with support over an hour and not getting anywhere.
Thank you HMTKSteve. I run Windows Mail on Vista (yeah I know the deal with Vista), but anyway your solution worked beautifully. Now I’m back in business with e-mail. No thanks to AT&T. I’d still be on hold with them… no wait, they’re already closed for the day. So much for 24 hour service. Thanks again!
I have just changed to att.net and have the internet working fine but cannot get my e mail functioning. I use Outlook express 6 and have called the att support line and they have walked me through the process. Still no luck. Does the case have any bearing on the settings? I notice that the setings in the e mail are all lower case. Not so the way I completed them.
Having Bell South for my dsl provider I had little options when AT&T purchased Bell. Just within the past week AT&T is sending out email regarding their “glorious” home website page upgrading to all customers. Emphasizing the extent of the change AT&T makes it a point to mention their email environment and desktop email, of course including mine, Mac Mail.
Personally, I have never liked Yahoo and really don’t want my AT&T mail serviced by them. I have four email accounts under my general log on. Three, screen name, business name and resemblance to my real name, downloading into my Mac Mail. I don’t care to, don’t want to and have no desire to change over to yahoo as ATT email server.
So now what? Maybe I should find another DSL provider, given the above as the latest change for me and also nothing but connection issues since AT&T purchased Bell. Not to mention, I was paying Bell and still am paying AT&T for services they no longer will be managing…gee outsourcing certainly is sc****** over Americans.
Why would AT&T Yahoo (my server) suggest this new explorer download when it is a threat to my computer and is not even fully compatable. Why also is it full of unwanted advertizements. I thought I could trust my own server to protect & do what’s right for my computer. How do I get rid of this new and back to my old internet explorer? Please don’t advise me to download anymore of your “Improvements???????”.
Why would AT&T Yahoo, my server advise me to download the new Internet Explorer 8 that is not only a threat to my computer but also not fully compatable. I foolishly thought I could trust my own server. How about telling me how I can get back my old explorer. Hey, I’m old and can’t handle all this mess and am not as computer competent as most. I’ve tried very hard to maintain my privacy & protect against spyware, Etc. but now I feel vulnerable with all of the advertisements and spam appearing in my e-mail. How disappointing you are and I will now be looking for a new server.
My biggest problem with this ‘unwanted’ switch using Microsoft Mail is that it is EXTREMELY SLOW going through the process of checking mail. It takes forever whereas before it was almost instantaneous. Thanks a lot, ATT, for another screw up!!! You might as well be Microsoft!!!!
I contracted for an ATT wireless device. Had nothing but trouble. Took it back after 7 days. Was charged $35 arestock, $40 taxes, and $64 usage fees. Talked with a snide representative and got no satisfaction.
Verizon here I come.
2007? Really? This goes back THAT far? Hmmmm…..anyway, thanks! This has been much more helpful than Att has ever been. Thought I’d tried that pop before, but this time I put my complete email address instead of what was there before–my ATT user name. Got my mail, finally! Now to see if we can fix my hubby’s problem. He keeps all his mail on the server and now it wants to download the entire 9900+ instead of only the new ones! Actually, I just found that ATT did send an email (which went to a folder) with this link:
http://support.att.com/upgrade. Whew!
Your comments were spot on about the yahoo/email problem. Two circuits through their tech support a months worth of delayed mail and now I’ve fixed it myself with your advice. FINALLY, what’s with this company. I’m shopping around and will drop phone and internet, their service is garbage. Fixed the smtp port number and smtp address myself, they stared right at it and did nothing.