Authentication error with Yahoo mail (one account fine, another not)
Similar to an earlier post (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1398079), I have been using TB to connect to yahoo accounts without issue for years, but about a month ago one of two yahoo email accounts failed. Since one of the accounts still works without issue, not clear what's going on?
Ubuntu 22.04 Thunderbird 102.11.0 (64-bit)
I think perhaps it's the email account add / configuration step for several reasons. Let's call the account that works "A" and the not-working broken account "B". Early on, I deleted the "B" account and have since been trying to get this to work again. During the "add account" step, I've let TB configure automatically, which yields the same server info as "A", so I don't think that's an issue; The settings that show up when attempting to add "B" (same as "A") are in a screenshot. After you click "Done", there's a pop up to get Yahoo's password. I enter this, then click yes to the agreement, and *immediately* get the authentication error (another screenshot). The speed of this error is what has me suspicious. It made me think some local files somehow have incorrect info. I tried clearing history ("everything") and restarting, but same story.
Unfortunately, the earlier question doesn't have an answer. Any more clues about this?
Thanks in advance
Chosen solution
I found the fix!
The key seems to be setting IMAP authentication method to "Auto detect" rather than "OAuth2" during the setup step. The default appears to be "OAuth2" after TB queries Yahoo at the start of the setup process. The final authentication method then shows up as "Normal password" (when looking at account settings to already setup and working yahoo account).
May / may not matter, but also used a special "third party app" password from yahoo as the initial password, then my normal password (same as if via web to yahoo directly) for the secondary authentication step.
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (6)
One thing I've not tried is to delete account "A" and then see if I can add it back (don't want to lose that too!)
Modified by ryantkoehler
Have an antivirus installed?
I know yahoo works on windows. I am using it to get mail in a configured account.
That is the classic type of error you see when the SSL certificate being offered is not trusted. Antivirus programs routinely use self signed certificates that Thunderbird does not trust. If you have any sort of VPN then again it may well be using self signed certificates. It is unfortunate, but many in the Linux world use self signed certificates "because they can", this is not really conducive to things "simply working".
Now we have the other part of this.
The message at the top talks about probing the server, so something is fundamentally flawed as it should download the settings for a yahoo account from the web from this XML file. https://autoconfig.thunderbird.net/v1.1/yahoo.com
So I guess we need to determine what is actually happening under the hood as it sounds like your certificate store is having all sorts of issues.
First lets make sure some Linux utility has not tried to change the store used. In the config editor search for the preference security.enterprise_roots.enabled and ensure it is set to false.
Now try the setup again with logging enabled. I talk about the process here https://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com/2021/10/logging-new-account-wizard.html
When you get the log in the error console. Please post it.
Modified by Matt
The security.enterprise_roots.enabled is (and was) false
With the Config Editor the keys in your earlier post are not found (I also just looked for "wizard" "logging" etc but didn't find anything that looked promising)... So I can't post (or see) any log messages.
Could regenerating a new ssh key help? I'm still suspicious that Thunderbird "knows" or "remembers" something that's no longer correct.
Also, I did try removing the working account (i.e. "A" in my story) from TB then adding it back. No problem at all. Both accounts are simple yahoo email.
Also, it sounds a bit sketchy, but with the "Secure connection failed" message there's a link "Or you can ad an exception..." I clicked this just to see where this went next, but nothing happens (so I don't think any exception was made). Regardless, after this, still stuck.
I also forgot to mention that both accounts work fine on TB on my Mac. It's just the Ubuntu TB that has the authentication error.
Chosen Solution
I found the fix!
The key seems to be setting IMAP authentication method to "Auto detect" rather than "OAuth2" during the setup step. The default appears to be "OAuth2" after TB queries Yahoo at the start of the setup process. The final authentication method then shows up as "Normal password" (when looking at account settings to already setup and working yahoo account).
May / may not matter, but also used a special "third party app" password from yahoo as the initial password, then my normal password (same as if via web to yahoo directly) for the secondary authentication step.