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Dec 2021 AOL mail security change--can't SEND

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 11 views
  • Last reply by lkint

lkint
lkint
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Both my wife and I run T-bird 91.6.0 (64k) under Win 10 on separate machines. 

  My wife and I have 2 verizon.net email accounts under our AOL mail. AOL mail changed their security in December 2021. 
  First my T-bird email failed, both send [STMP] & receive [POP3]. Then my wife's T-bird failed. I researched SUPPORT and got her S/Receive to work by creating an AOL mail APP password. By trying the same for mine, I only got my T-bird receive to work. 
   One AOL support person said to "drop the T-bird AOL account" and recreate it with the new AOL APP passwords.
   My question: will I lose the contacts and thousands of emails if I do this?  If so, how can I re-load the contacts and emails?
Both my wife and I run T-bird 91.6.0 (64k) under Win 10 on separate machines. My wife and I have 2 verizon.net email accounts under our AOL mail. AOL mail changed their security in December 2021. First my T-bird email failed, both send [STMP] & receive [POP3]. Then my wife's T-bird failed. I researched SUPPORT and got her S/Receive to work by creating an AOL mail APP password. By trying the same for mine, I only got my T-bird receive to work. One AOL support person said to "drop the T-bird AOL account" and recreate it with the new AOL APP passwords. My question: will I lose the contacts and thousands of emails if I do this? If so, how can I re-load the contacts and emails?

All Replies (2)

Stans
Stans
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One AOL support person said to "drop the T-bird AOL account" and recreate it with the new AOL APP passwords.

That won't be necessary. All you have to do is change the password that is saved in Thunderbird's password vault, replacing it with the app password that is working for receiving. To access Tbird's password vault, go to Preferences > Privacy & Security > Saved Passwords. There you will find entries for SMTP and incoming servers. Clicking the Show Passwords button should reveal them, allowing you to directly change the ones that need changing via right-click > Edit Password. It doesn't get easier than this.

lkint
lkint Question owner
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Thanks, Stans. Finally success, but only after I found another "change" glitch at AOL that most others probably didn't have. Your suggestion and some of the others on the same "AOL changing security" issue moved me along to a new STMP sending error "mailbox not found."

It turns out that my AOL account name is Lawrence and my T-bird account name was Larry. Changing Larry to Lawrence was the final step to success.

Also, in T-bird I have switched my STMP settings from stmp.verizon.net to stmp.aol.com, closed settings, and then switched the STMP authorization from "normal" to "oAuth." After my first [successful!] SEND, my "preferences" SAVED PW's now shows the pop.verizon.net normal PW and the SMTP.aol.com OAuth password. My weeks of having to SEND from the Mail.aol.com web application are over. [All of my important such "SENDs" I had been BCCing to myself, since T-bird receive was working.]