Intermittant Password Requests

N

needhelp7

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I use Mac Mail to handle my .mac email and my sbcglobal.net email. I've done it this way for 2 years. I leave my Mac Mail program open and have the preferences set to check for new mail every 5 minutes. THE PROBLEM: Recently, only when Mac Mail is checking my sbc account, an error comes up saying that the server rejected my password and to please type it again... I do, and it goes through fine. (It never gets an error when it is checking my .mac mail.) WHAT'S WEIRD and irritating: Is that this doesn't happen every single time (not every 5 minutes). But it happens maybe every 3rd or 4th time!!! If I check for new mail by manually clicking on "check mail" it checks it just fine then too.

I called SBC and they said since I can check my mail when I go to their webmail, and I can get online, etc, etc, that it is something with my mail program itself. (Even though the .mac mail account isn't having a problem!)

Would it possibly have anything to do with sbcglobal.net being POP mail (.mac mail isn't)? I'm fishing here guys! I don't have a clue.

Has anybody else out there ran in to something like this?

Oh, by the way, I'm running OS 10.3.9.
 
Yup, same here. I use SBC DSL with an sbcglobal.net email address, and I get the same dialog box infrequently.

I found that increasing the interval at which Mail checks for new email to 10 minutes gets rid of that pesky dialog box. As far as other workarounds, I know of none. Some mail servers only let you check for new mail at specified intervals, and if you check too often, they simply refuse the connection (which Mail interprets as a bad password). This may or may not be the problem with SBC.

There is no good Mac help at SBC, so calling them again would be fruitless. You'll find much better tech support than SBC here.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
There is no good Mac help at SBC, so calling them again would be fruitless. You'll find much better tech support than SBC here.
Click to expand...

This is true, but it's not a Mac problem. I have the same problem using a Linux mail client on a PC. (In fact, it's worse on Linux: it never accepts the password.) And the problem is related to specific addresses. I have six SBC addresses, and only one of them causes me problems. It's entirely an SBC problem--a problem with their servers. I've sniffed my connection and I know the SBC servers are being sent the right password, it's just not accepting it, for whatever reason.
 
True -- I suppose we should say "there is no good non-Microsoft help at [insert company here]" because that's what it really boils down to. Why support the minority 5% of the computer market?
 
I'm having the same problem with intermittantly being asked for a password. Has anyone found a fix for this yet?
 
I've got the same problem with MacMail, but not with Thunderbird (Mozilla mail) on two different users.
We're also with sbcglobal.net
 
Just an update: it now happens more frequently than ever... multiple times a day, sometimes in back-to-back connections (check once, asks for password, check again immediately, asks for password again).

It's the most unpredictable thing I've come across -- there's no rhyme or reason to it at all, at least not that I can see on the surface.
 
ElDiablo I wouldn't want anyone to hold me accountable for this suggestion, but based on a conversation I overheard at our local MUG meeting, try putting a blank as the first character in your password.
 
I'm using Mac mail with a BT Broadband connection and this constant rejection of my BT password is driving me bonkers. One quick fix is to go through 'mailbox' then 'online status' also changing the frequency of 'searching for new mail' does seem to have helped.

mark
 
I have the same problem with yahoo.co.uk mail, although when I changed it to check every 5 minutes instead of every minute, the problem pretty much went away - it has on occasion been known to wake me up when the computer turns on in the morning, however, so it hasn't entirely vanished...
Don't know of any fixes, though
 
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