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Thunderbird connections to Yahoo mail server

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  • Last reply by jrcone7

jrcone7
jrcone7
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Am using Thunderbird version 68.12.0 (32-bit) with Windows 7; Yahoo sent out a warning about users of third party mail software having to reset their connections to upgrade security, which I accomplished 9/1/20 by going into "Account Settings" and under "Account Actions" removing my two yahoo mail accounts and then adding them back in with the pre-existing passwords. ["Saved Logins" window on TB shows new Logins "imap://imap.mail.yahoo.com" and "oauth://login.yahoo.com" were created for each Yahoo mail account.] Worked for a few weeks, but now all I can get for either one is a TB message saying "Authentication failure while connecting to server imap.mail.yahoo.com" when it tries to connect to Yahoo. Tried deleting one of the accounts again and adding it back, and after TB exhausts its attempts to connect to Yahoo, it comes back with "Thunderbird failed to find the settings for your email account." Direct connection to Yahoo.com via Firefox shows email address and password I had been entering in the "Set Up an Existing Email Account" window are valid. Ditch Yahoo or what?

Am using Thunderbird version 68.12.0 (32-bit) with Windows 7; Yahoo sent out a warning about users of third party mail software having to reset their connections to upgrade security, which I accomplished 9/1/20 by going into "Account Settings" and under "Account Actions" removing my two yahoo mail accounts and then adding them back in with the pre-existing passwords. ["Saved Logins" window on TB shows new Logins "imap://imap.mail.yahoo.com" and "oauth://login.yahoo.com" were created for each Yahoo mail account.] Worked for a few weeks, but now all I can get for either one is a TB message saying "Authentication failure while connecting to server imap.mail.yahoo.com" when it tries to connect to Yahoo. Tried deleting one of the accounts again and adding it back, and after TB exhausts its attempts to connect to Yahoo, it comes back with "Thunderbird failed to find the settings for your email account." Direct connection to Yahoo.com via Firefox shows email address and password I had been entering in the "Set Up an Existing Email Account" window are valid. Ditch Yahoo or what?

Chosen solution

After getting pinged every 10 minutes with the same proxy server error message today for the yahoo mail account, I decided to just go back to the "Normal password" authentication method, and of course it started working as well as could be expected. What's weird though is that while the Thunderbird connection to that yahoo e-mail address was in the proxy error state, another google based dochub account (accessed via Firefox) that referenced that same yahoo mail account would not open up with it's own separate password and the 2 factor authentication code from my cell phone on 3 consecutive tries, but as soon as I got that Thunderbird yahoo mail connection operational again, the google site login using that ymail address as the user ID let me log in with no issues. I'm not sure I want to know the reason for that.

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jrcone7
jrcone7 Question owner
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Chosen Solution

After getting pinged every 10 minutes with the same proxy server error message today for the yahoo mail account, I decided to just go back to the "Normal password" authentication method, and of course it started working as well as could be expected. What's weird though is that while the Thunderbird connection to that yahoo e-mail address was in the proxy error state, another google based dochub account (accessed via Firefox) that referenced that same yahoo mail account would not open up with it's own separate password and the 2 factor authentication code from my cell phone on 3 consecutive tries, but as soon as I got that Thunderbird yahoo mail connection operational again, the google site login using that ymail address as the user ID let me log in with no issues. I'm not sure I want to know the reason for that.