Today has been fun. Several months ago Cox decided to offload their email service to Yahoo, and this was the day. They're transitioning customers in waves, and apparently my wave came up today.
So I hopped over to Yahoo for the first time in forever and chose a new password. This went wrong in some very peculiar ways, but eventually I got it set up—which was all very fine, but of little use since I don't access email via the web. As it happens, I use Thunderbird on my desktop and Outlook on my tablet (don't ask).
But nothing I did got my email up on either platform. I had gotten a message with a link if I needed instructions for getting an app connected, but it just led to a generic Yahoo page that was no help. All the server names were correct, the password was correct, but nada. Eventually I gave up.
But after dinner I figured it out. Can you guess? No you can't. It turns out that Yahoo demands OAuth2 password authentication. Why? Beats me. Do they tell you this anywhere? No they do not. It's insane. There can't be more than one person in a hundred who would ever figure this out.
But it was the key that finally got Thunderbird going. Sadly, Outlook doesn't support OAuth2, so I'm now reinstalling Thunderbird on my tablet. I don't quite remember why I ditched it in the first place, but I have a feeling I'm about to get my memory jogged.
Anyway, why all the grief? My guess: Yahoo wants people to give up and just use webmail, which includes their ads. So their instructions for third-party clients are deliberately obtuse. Assholes.
I made the switch to web-based email years ago. It was painful, but eventually I got used to it. I don't get any ads with gmail on my laptop, probably due to using ublock origin.
Well, at least Microsoft claims compatibility for outlook: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-or-manage-a-yahoo-email-account-in-outlook-ff76dd33-3127-42ac-b93f-1da2dc9054c7#:~:text=You%20can%20add%20a%20Yahoo,for%20File%20on%20the%20ribbon.
That is compatability for the Microsoft 365 Outlook. Drum likely has an old-school desktop installation. Those including Outlook 2019 are not apparently - presumably to drive users to 365.
Probably if Drum wishes to use the desktop client he needs to do the App password which is per desktop installation (I myself do this, not for the yahoo service but another, for both 2016 and 2019 Outlook hard drive installs)
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/password-sln15241.html
Do you sign in with your Google/Facebook/Twitter account into other websites? That's OAUTH2 or (S)ingle(S)ign(O)n. It's the de facto standard across the internet.
You probably could have just searched on the internet for "firebird access yahoo email" and the first result would point you to the resolution: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-yahoo
Couldn't you just set up an email account through your domain provider? You wouldn't even necessarily have to switch your "official" Yahoo (or Cox) account to a new kevin@jabberwocking.com address (or whatever) -- just set up automatic forwarding and free yourself from Yahoo's authentication altogether.
I was looking into this briefly the other day related too gmail and I think newer versions of outlook do support oauth2. But honestly thunderbird is probably a better decision. The only reason i can remember using outlook instead is uniformity at my company with the people who are only comfortable with Outlook.
I kept a Yahoo account for years as a convenience for I do not recall what and it was absolutely the worst.
Any other email is better.
yup, i have one for occasionally testing various things, and it seems terrible. but also free, so can't complain too much.
Yup
Webmail has all the grace and mature functionality of a kid's tricycle. And then they stuff it down your throat and tell you how wonderful it is...it says so right in their PowerPoint presents and spreadsheets. Bend over.
You may be correct, Kevin, but as a long-time Yahoo mail user, I remember the move to extra authorization came about a decade or more ago after Yahoo had a massive data theft of their users' passwords.
I've been running my own email server since the 90s, but am getting close to giving up. Google, destroyer of the open net is of course the reason.
There are two large mail outfits that it is impossible to deal with if you're small: ATT and Google. ATT are just assholes, and I don't care, their (outsourced) mail server is tiny and irrelevant. And anyway the Death Star can kiss my ass, they are a special mix of evil and incompetent.
Google just doesn't give a shit. They randomly bounce my email for periods of time, claiming spam[1]. They want me to register in their "web master tools" thing as an email provider, but it is impossible to do so, because "mail volume is too low". And unfortunately people I talk to actually do use them.
This should probably bother me less than it does, but I hate being forced out of self-sufficiency. I don't use "cloud" services, I run my own. I guess that's bad for the economy.
[1] My domains and IP have never sent any spam; they have a pristine history going back decades. I can also verify I've never run an ad on them - they've never been registered with any of the exchanges.
Brave new digital world. While it offers some useful things, they are trying to turn us into machines, and waste our time in doing it.
Yahoo is ATT for those who don't know.
I have an original Pacbell.net address from back when dinosaurs roamed the internets. I also was one of early adopters of Yahoo Mail. ATT calls my Yahoo Mail a legacy account and they have tried at various times to shut it down.
I used to drive by the Yahoo house on Hamilton Ave in Palo Alto.
We never should have sold the Palo Alto house.
My sympathies. I've used Yahoo/Outlook for decades, and both have only gotten worse. I considered using gmail as my "main" account, when Yahoo became Big Brother (aka, Oath...ugh), but our enterprise server guy just shrugged and said both were bad, but in different ways. I stayed with Yahoo because it was compatible with "legacy" Outlook, but then that changed when Microsoft drove everyone to MS 365. The 365 version of Outlook is truly awful.
The university where I work had to switch their e-mail servers a few years ago. In the process, they changed the sent and inbox names. When I logged in to the new system, it proceeded to delete all my mail in T-bird then reload it under the new name. Took hours.
I have a couple of forever email addresses from Frontier (a truly awful company), and use Yahoo web mail. If you enlarge your screen to 110% the ads on the right move off the screen.
I switched for awhile to Outlook on my laptop (Microsoft 365), but honestly it's not really better and just takes up computer memory.
Doctorow's Enshittification continues apace. Conform, User or be derezed.
end of line
Is everyone here not an Apple user, or does Apple also burp if used with the OAuth2? Caveat- I don't know what OAuth2 is so maybe all below is moot
I've used Apple's Mail since 2006, and with several internet providers. My Mail app handles 2 Apple Mail Aliases, gmail accounts, an AOL account and a Yahoo account. I'll admit I seldom use the Yahoo or AOL accounts as they are too slow, but the Apple app handles them fine
All the accounts work fine, on both my Mac(s) and iOS device(s)
I'm sorry, but Thunderbird is a car brand that started out good, got maybe even better over the next three generations with room for four people, then got worse and worse eventually went away other than an unconvincing retro version based on the style of the first one.
Also a delicious yet cheap wine that gets you drunk faster.
Twenty years ago I got another federal job in a different location. Their computers for some reason didn't work with Hotmail. I switched to Yahoo.
The end.
wtf? _Thunderbirds_ is a cartoon series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbirds_(TV_series)
The Fabulous Thunderbirds made good music back in the day.
I’m still in the middle of the “transition” and I can tell you, think “Comcast must die” level of incompetence on their part and exasperation for me.
Will this pain result in a lowered bill?No. Will Yahoo! Encouragement of “using their (imbecilic) app result in a flood of never seen before spam? You betcha. Are they selling our addresses? I can’t accuse them of that YET because only one of the accounts has transitioned, but I have foreboding.
I have two accounts; my IT hating spouse has one. Transitioning my first account went OK; only took me three EXTRA days to get it working on my iPad.
Transitioning the second account? I’m on week two. I cannot make it work.
I have noticed in attempting to contact YAHOO! That they must be feeling some heat as they’ve laid on some almost-English speaking helpdesk staff and have completely revamped what passed for the “help” on their website.
Still, not a good experience. On the first call I GAVE UP after 89 minutes on hold. (True story: I had to go to the bathroom).
2d attempt was this morning at 7:00 am EDT. I didn’t have to wait very long because they cut me off.
Third try and I got thru.
And just what, exactly, did the problem turn out to be? Well, even tho Cox—and I was using Cox back when it was Media General, so I’m a really long time customer—sent out the “your (2d) account is ready to transition” email and I followed all the instructions, it wasn’t ready to transition because (and this doesn’t have to be true) according to YAHOO! Cox never moved the account. Of course Yahoo could be lying to cover its bazoo.
IOW, don’t blame Yahoo, blame Cox. And I do. They started yipping about this last fall; they didn’t get around to me until two weeks ago. I suspect a lot of things have gone wrong.
And so I’ll wait until eventually I get another email telling me “you’re ready to transition,”. I don’t even want to think about the chaos this will cause for my totally non IT comprehending husband.
Maybe I’ll die of old age before they get around to me.