[Macworld]

Post your comments for Bugs & Fixes: Yahoo Mail won't send here

[scottinsac]

I have been having the same issues (using OS X mail client) with Comcast for weeks now. I get messages stating that my password has been rejected, or that the outgoing mail server can not be accessed.

[kcsamerica]

I can't believe AT&T did this without notifying their customers. It took me several hours to figure out what was going on, which cost my client a quite a few bucks for my time.
I remember SBC did this about 5-10 years ago. Back then, they told me they weren't allowed to tell their customers because then spammers would know how to work around it! Umm, wouldn't it only take a matter of a short time for professional spammers to figure it out? At what, the expense of hours, weeks, or often much longer for the technologically challenged to figure things out!?!?
And all this coming from a company that once told me "despite thunderstorms knocking out your power, our DSL modem is perfectly fine and is not shorted out. What you need to do is build modern power plants." (Verbatim quote from their customer service.)
Gotta love these conglomerates!
--Brian (KCS)

[pln]

Yes, I've been having this problem even after I made sure I have the correct servers specified. It works fine on my iPhone, but I keep getting errors in OS X Mail.
I don't really care since my Yahoo mail is my spam account and I never get anything interesting there.

[ClunkClunk]

My parents use SBC/ATT/Yahoo/Everyone DSL, and a few weeks ago they were complaining that they couldn't send email through there account. Sure enough, when I took a look at it, they were right.
I fiddled with it for about 15 minutes, checked AT&T, SBC and Yahoo's DSL sites, each one had a different set of settings, and all were obviously out of date. I even called AT&T and talked to a tier 1 tech who was worthless as she also had out of date information, and decided not to wait on hold for the 30 minutes to talk to a tier 2 tech.
I created each of my parents a new Gmail account, and they've never been happier. It was a piece of cake to set up with Mail 3.0, and works like a charm. I even set Gmail to check their old POP account, and import any new mail from it, so they can slowly migrate to their new accounts.

[VanNess]

I know AT&T/Yahoo is not the greatest email program by far, but they did send out notices, a number of times. I have one dated 2/2/07 that states I better make the changes Ted suggested by 3/30/07. I also received a couple more messages on 9/24/07 that said "Time is running out ? update your email settings to help us serve you better." I received other notices even after I made the changes, so they did attempt to inform their subscribers. I'm sure a lot of people just ignored the emails or deleted them right away thinking they were just more junk from a corporation.

[workingmacs]

While what Ted wrote is correct, there's an additional, more insidious problem that affects some users. If you are on an AT&T/Yahoo connection and send your mail using a non-AT&T domain (i.e. not att.net, sbcglobal.net, etc.) then you also need to register your email address at the ATT/Yahoo Webmail site. So if you send mail using an address in the form of me@mycompany.com, and are configured to use ATT SMTP servers, you could have this problem. Entourage users will get an error message sending them to a web page for help. Mail.app users won't be so fortunate. For details see: http://help.yahoo.co...tutorials/cg/cgextaccess1.html
This seems to resolve the issue for most, but not all users. If it doesn't work, consider using someone else for SMTP.

[ClunkClunk]

I should also clarify for my situation a bit. My parents were using a POP account with a completely separate provider, not through AT&T. Unfortunately, since AT&T filters port 25, and this craptastic email account they had could only operate on port 25, I had to use AT&T's SMTP servers when I set it up years ago. Now with the changes, they never received the emails warning them (though no fault of AT&T's of course), but what really irks me is that at the time, their support website was out of date, and so were their tech support personnel.

[joekewe]

Don't you love how AT&T changes their email settings without notifying anyone -- also their DNS settings. I can't believe it is more cost-efficient for them to field thousands of angry/confused tech support phone calls than simply sending everyone an email before the change.
Perhaps AT&T just wants to cut down on the number of customers actually using their SMPT servers. This problem broke our internal fax-to-email server, along with their stupid "account needs to be verified" error. More reason to switch away from the Death Star as your ISP.

[bgreinke]

FYI, the pacbell and sbcglobal smtp servers previously did not require authentication (login and password) to send mail if you were sending from inside their DSL. They've changed that. Now, to use their smtp servers (even if you are connected to the internet via pacbell/sbc/att DSL) you will need to authenticate (login and password) to the smtp server. Your login and password for their smtp server is probably your pacbell or sbc or att email account or DSL account login/password.
For those of you who have pacbell/sbc/att DSL and never use the email provided by them, you'll probably need to dig through your paperwork to find out what that login/password is.

[aboxofjosh]

Did they really change the settings without notifying customers by email in advance?

[aboxofjosh]

Did they really change the settings without notifying customers in advance?

[kcsamerica]

I'm not sure why you received a number of notices, whereas now four of my side-business clients AND my day job small company (about 12 employees, each with AT&T email/access) has not been notified even once. Three of the four side-business clients all have unique email addresses (AT&T's personal email option) either owned by AT&T or going through their email servers. My day job receives AT&T's services including email & DSL. Although the email is initiated by another company, we still need to use AT&T's servers (otherwise relaying is not permitted). Again, not even one notification.

--Brian (KCS)

[kcsamerica]

aboxofjosh- from my experience, 100% of the time, they have not notified their customers. Granted, someone above said they were notified several times. But again, my experience, this isn't the first time and I wouldn't be surprised to be completely disappointed and frustrated with AT&T again in the future.

--Brian (KCS)