Mozilla Thunderbird can no longer sign in to Yahoo! Mail and retrieve the inbox. Whenever I try logging in, I get the error “login to server imap.mail.yahoo.com failed”.
I made sure that my password is correct, and even changed the account’s password to be safe… the same password works on the website yahoo.com but not in Thunderbird. I also tried with a fresh Thunderbird profile, same thing. My version of Thunderbird is 52.1.1 (64-bit) on Linux openSUSE Tumbleweed x64. The problem started happening this morning, without anyone touching any settings of the account.
The account has the security option “allow apps that use less secure sign in” enabled! The problem appears to be that this option is now being ignored, and Thunderbird behaves just as if it’s turned off. This sort of thing has happened in the past, and on multiple occasions I had to turn that setting off then back on for Thunberbird to work… however this time, I have been toggling it for an hour and it still refuses to sign in. I also don’t have two-factor authentication enabled so that is not the problem either.
Note that this problem does not happen with all Y! Mail accounts; Mine works just fine, whereas my mother’s experiences this problem. We both have the same OS, Thunderbird version, IMAP server settings, and of course the “less secure sign in” option enabled in the account’s security settings. Therefore this isn’t due to Yahoo! breaking compatibility with Thunderbird, but some other issue affecting specific accounts. We use the following options:
Note: I have attempted to use OAuth2 for password authentication. Despite this being Yahoo’s preferred method however, Thunderbird complains that it is not supported by the email provider and all articles tell me that I must use the normal password option for now.
Does anyone know what is causing this issue and how to fix it? Also please no alternate suggestions like “use another email client”, I’m happy with Thunderbird and wish to stick to it. Thank you.
afaik there is a trick to get the free yahoo mail working with pop3 mail clients (google is your friend you need to change your region in yahoo prefferences)
I have 2 yahoo! accounts working in T-bird with these settings
Server Settings
Server Name: pop.mail.yahoo.com
port: 995
Connection Security: SSL/TLS
Authentication Method: Normal Password
Outgoing Server (SMTP) Settings
Server Name: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
port: 465
Authentication Method: Normal Password
Connection Security: SSL/TLS
IIRC pop3 required different settings or was reserved for special accounts. If all else fails in the future, I’ll keep this in mind and give it a try. Thanks for the info!
For now the problem appears to have just been fixed, and Thunderbird is once again able to log in and access the inbox correctly. I did not make any changes, and it appears to have solved itself after several hours. No idea what could have caused it, but next time I’ll wait a few more hours before a definitive conclusion.
About a half year ago (maybe longer),
Yahoo terminated free support for non-web mail clients… It’s Yahoo’s way of realizing that you’re not paying for your mail with ads (Yahoo pushes ads through web browser clients), so wants to charge you $20/year for access without advertising.
Most people have seen this, and had to act accordingly (use a web browser or pay the $20). It’s possible some people might not have seen this yet, but that’d be surprising. In any case, with Verizon closing on the Yahoo sale loose ends and loopholes are being closed.
The exception is if you get your Internet service through a Yahoo partner… ATT is the most well known.
In that case, you can connect to special ATT mail servers and not have to pay the $20 annual fee.
afaik yahoo always charged for pop3 access there was a trick around it https://techblissonline.com/yahoo-pop-email-settings/
you basically need to change your location in yahoo settings if you use yahoo web services don’t do this but if you never login to yahoo and only want to access your email from a pop3 client it’s a no brainier I did this way back when it was only available to 1 country (not it seams to be 4)