ATT Email no longer works on Thunderbird

[dct1970]

I am US-based with att.net internet service. I use POP3 server inbound.att.net. I've been using Linux Mint for years with Thunderbird [T-Bird] as my email client...currently at version 78.8.1 No problems. As of 06/02/2021 sometime after 10am local time T-Bird can no longer connect to the POP3 server. I checked Update Manager History and there were no installs of new software around 10am...the prior updates were about 8am. T-Bird was not one of the packages updated at that time best I can tell...but even if it was I continued to receive email into T-Bird for a couple of hours after the update.

I know I have the ID and password correct because nothing has changed in that regard and I can successfully log onto my email via ATT/Yahoo browser interface as well as download email on my wife's iPad...can't send from the iPad but that's a old different story.

I attempted to set up email in T-Bird version 68.x on another Mint machine and it would not connect to the server either.

I just tried installing both Claws and Geary email clients today on this machine. Geary appears to be IMAP only. I can swap to IMAP I suppose but I prefer POP3.

Claws is getting the following for POP3 setup:
[2021-06-12 14:08:57] POP< -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server error - Please try again later.
*** error occurred on authentication
*** Authentication failed.

That is the same message I get back in T-Bird.

I did some research and am seeing some info about ATT swapping to OAUTH or OAUTH2 authentication. But that info seems to be a few years old. There is info on there for T-Bird setup and it talks about getting some sort of token or something. I haven't done this yet because I wanted some guidance from the experts on this forum first.

Any guidance you can provide would be most appreciated!

Thanks!

[SMG]

I am US-based with att.net internet service. I use POP3 server inbound.att.net. I've been using Linux Mint for years with Thunderbird [T-Bird] as my email client...currently at version 78.8.1 No problems. As of 06/02/2021 sometime after 10am local time T-Bird can no longer connect to the POP3 server. I checked Update Manager History and there were no installs of new software around 10am...the prior updates were about 8am. T-Bird was not one of the packages updated at that time best I can tell...but even if it was I continued to receive email into T-Bird for a couple of hours after the update.

Have you checked the ATT community forums? It seems like quite a few people have had issues over the last year with AT&T service.

Inbound.att.net is not working for POP3 in Outlook
So many people are having issues with AT&T email since the change
"SWBELL.NET" domain'd POP3 accounts stopped authenicating around October 2020

[dct1970]

Thanks for the feedback! Yes I had seen info similar to what you provided. But several of them were from years ago so I was wondering if whatever that was had been resolved in T-Bird by now. But apparently not. And the next question is if persons had this issue 3-4 years ago, why is it just now impacting me?

So I guess I'll just have to obtain a "secure email key" or whatever it is. Bummer. Why can't things just be easy.

[mikeflan]

As of 06/02/2021 sometime after 10am local time T-Bird can no longer connect to the POP3 server.

AT&T quit for me on TB about a 8-10 months ago. I called AT&T, but they were clueless and couldn't easily escalate to higher level support. I had to abandon my AT&T e-mail address. I just forward it to another e-mail that does work on TB. I never did figure out what caused it.