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thunderbird cannot connect to aol e-mail - reason: not a valid certificate

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  • Last reply by olegreyghost
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Trying to connect to my AOL mail account on a laptop w/ win 10 & thunderbird returns the message not a valid certificate. AOL support said change the password to reset the account, which I did. Now all I get is " Host contacted, sending login info " & it the server connection times out. I can log into my AOL account with firefox. Any help will be greatly appreciated !!

Trying to connect to my AOL mail account on a laptop w/ win 10 & thunderbird returns the message not a valid certificate. AOL support said change the password to reset the account, which I did. Now all I get is " Host contacted, sending login info " & it the server connection times out. I can log into my AOL account with firefox. Any help will be greatly appreciated !!

Chosen solution

Wayne, Thanks for the reply. I am using the Bitdefender suite w/vpn. But they are not interfering with Thunderbird. It seems TBird v 140.8 has a problem with AOLs' server certificate. Says it is not valid & refuses to connect. Don't know if the recent upgrade is the source of the problem. Research shows the problem is with the pop3 protocol. Created a new AOL account with the imap protocol & TBird now seems to be functioning normally, again. Was able to use the test function for ssl/tls & both protocols tested " successful connection ". From what I could see the certificates looked good. But I'm no expert. Have been using the pop3 protocol since AOL started with many different email clients. Hopefully this explanation will help someone else overcome the connection problem if this is indeed a problem within TBird. olegreyghost.

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What AV software software are you running? Any firewall or VPN?

Chosen Solution

Wayne, Thanks for the reply. I am using the Bitdefender suite w/vpn. But they are not interfering with Thunderbird. It seems TBird v 140.8 has a problem with AOLs' server certificate. Says it is not valid & refuses to connect. Don't know if the recent upgrade is the source of the problem. Research shows the problem is with the pop3 protocol. Created a new AOL account with the imap protocol & TBird now seems to be functioning normally, again. Was able to use the test function for ssl/tls & both protocols tested " successful connection ". From what I could see the certificates looked good. But I'm no expert. Have been using the pop3 protocol since AOL started with many different email clients. Hopefully this explanation will help someone else overcome the connection problem if this is indeed a problem within TBird. olegreyghost.

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