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Mail Authentication Problem

Avatar Trevor Hewson
For the last three days, neither Mary nor I have been able to receive mail from imap.mail.me.com on the iMac. Our account settings have not changed, and I have checked that we have SSL enabled, using port 993 and authentication by password is set.

We can both receive mail from our .mac addresses via iPhone and iPad and on the iMac via iCloud, but with Mail on the iMac we get a failure to connect and are prompted to insert our password, which of course doesn't make any difference.

My password doesn't meet Apple's latest criteria and I did wonder whether that was the problem but Mary's password is 'legal' so that doesn't seem to be it.

Coincidentally (or not?) another alert has sprung up from Mail in the last few days complaining that the identity of a Nildram mail server could not be verified. We left Nildram two years ago and the accounts were deleted from Mail at that time. Could this be a sign that Mail on the iMac has got itself confused in some way? Shutting down the iMac and restarting it made no difference.

We would be grateful for any suggestions.

Re: Mail Authentication Problem

Avatar Mick Burrell
Assuming you know the correct password, try going in to Keychain Access and deleting the entry for the server. When you run Mail it will naturally ask for your password and if it logs on OK should make a new entry in Keychain Access ready for next time. And no, I don't know why the existing should stop working :-)

Re: Mail Authentication Problem

Avatar Trevor Hewson
After Mick's wonderfully clear talk at last night's Bournemouth meeting, I felt emboldened to have another go at resolving this problem. Whilst I can't claim to have got to the bottom of it, the authentication issue has been sidestepped by turning off the problematic account in Mail then turning on email synch in the iCloud section of system preferences.

My only theory as to why the old fashioned way of downloading mail from the imap.me.com server stopped working is that Apple may have tightened up on their security and the server will no longer accept a login from the iMac because my iPad is already logged into the same account. This problem only showed up a couple of weeks or so ago and I have a dim memory of seeing a message on the iMac along the lines of 'another computer is using this address (or account?)'. Also there was an ios6 update around the same time. Either or both of these may or may not be relevant.

Anyway, as you will appreciate, since it all now seems to be working okay via the iCloud, my interest in finding the root cause of the problem has declined rather sharply!
 
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