The TWC settings seem to be all over the place, given the 'evolution' from TWC to Charter to Spectrum.

If you change the smtp to mobile.charter.net, 587, STARTTLS, normal password, User Name = email address, does it work? Is this for an AT&T account? What's the antivirus app?

sfhowes:

Thank you for responding.

1. When I made the smtp change (the other characteristics were already in place) you recommended, it wouldn't send in several tries. What happened at each attempt was an endless "sending" frame that indicated that sending was in process but never ended.

2. I haven't had an AT&T account for over a year, but this email address is still active and has experience no problems previously. As I mentioned before, it sends fine from webmail.

3. The antivirus application during all of this has been Windows Security.

4. No changes in email settings were made between the last email that sent properly and the onset of the problem.

Spectrum have apparently made some changes per this topic https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1420953

given brighthouse, charter and twc appear to be essentially the same server certificate, it may be there is an issue with having compatible cyphers.

Matt,

I much appreciate your response.

I pulled up that other support topic you linked, read it carefully, but don't quite entirely understand what I'm reading. Sadly, I am not techy enough always to comprehend these things fully, not knowing, for example, what a "cypher" is (unfortunately, what is obvious to one is not obvious to another--until of course it becomes obvious).

I guess the big question is: What can I do to resolve this issue? Spectrum is about as customer-friendly as nearly all the large corporate outfits these days, which means mind-numbing conversations with "Bob" in Bangalore, whose name actually is Ajish and whose English is not idiomatic, whose "tech support" abilities are exceedingly limited, and with whom it takes forever to make virtually no progress.

Temporarily, I'm using my Gmail account, run through Thunderbird, to send emails and adding "reply-to" to the messages, with my primary email address listed there, the one that suddenly stopped sending using the mail.twc.com server.

As an aside, I don't like Spectrum much at all, but I wound up liking AT&T even less when I was using it, finally having reached my limit. Right then, Spectrum was offering a heck of a deal, which I held my nose and took.

re :I wound up liking AT&T even less when I was using it, finally having reached my limit. Right then, Spectrum was offering a heck of a deal, which I held my nose and took.

Spectrum is therefore your ISP.

re :2. I haven't had an AT&T account for over a year, but this email address is still active

Are you talking about an email address that ends like this '@att.net' ? What comes after the @ in the email address ?

Toad-Hall,

Thanks for jumping in.

1. Yes, Spectrum is my ISP.

2. The email address is XXXXXXX@sbcglobal.net.

If your account is with sbcglobal, you shouldn't be using twc servers, but the ones for AT&T accounts:

https://www.att.com/support/article/dsl-high-speed/KM1010523/

Be sure to create a secure mail key and use that in TB instead of the account password.

sfhowes,

Thanks for the response.

I probably don't understand exactly how all of this works, but I departed AT&T for Spectrum as my ISP over a year ago, leaving me with no account there but retaining an email address that continued to function as before, only through Spectrum, using the settings I reported earlier.

To be sure I wasn't missing something besides whatever I'm missing, I tried the AT&T settings specified on the web page you linked. It doesn't work, probably because I no longer have an account at AT&T. But my Spectrum account handled this email address just fine for over a year.

So is that @sbcglobal.net not supposed to work except through AT&T? If so, I wonder how it did just fine all these months.

An account with a given provider should work on any ISP's network. You might have been able to send from an sbcglobal account through the twc/Spectrum smtp server, but I don't see how you could receive mail on that account without having a working connection to AT&T servers, and if that's the case, it would make more sense to send through AT&T servers as well. As far as I know, Spectrum and AT&T are separate entities.

sfhowes,

More information---thank you.

As it happens, receiving emails on that XXXXXX@sbcglobal.net address never was interrupted, probably because the inbound server is inbound.att.net. Emails continue to arrive, but now, when using "Reply" to answer an email to that address, I must change the "From" address to an alternative Gmail address and then enter my XXXXX@sbcglobal.net address in an added "Reply-to" field. This minimizes the confusion for those receiving emails from me.

It is difficult to understand why the send function suddenly evaporated. I've seen comments on a couple of gripe sites where allegations of flaky service are asserted, perhaps due to growth of Charter/Spectrum beyond its ability to handle it. I have no idea if this has any validity.

This is most frustrating.

So, you are saying you can't send from the sbcglobal account through outbound.att.net, 465, SSL/TLS, normal password, with the same secure mail key that works with inbound.att.net, 995, SSL/TLS, normal password?

To avoid confusion, you might try a test by adding the account to a new profile, with AT&T settings. Help/Troubleshooting Info, about:profiles, to create and launch profiles.

The answer is yes, except I don't have a "secure mail key," if you're referring to one of those usb-like devices used for 2FA, but just regular password. (I got one of those keys the other day but have not used it yet for anything.) I didn't know that "send" wouldn't work from the outbound.att.net server until I tried it awhile ago, because it originally failed suddenly from mail.twc.com.

I guess I'll try the new profile test and report the result, but all of this seems unduly onerous for a dumb email account. Would Gmail email be less subject to this sort of thing, do you know?

Thanks again.

A secure mail key is just a strong password. Follow the directions on the link in my previous reply and use the key in TB where you would normally use the account password.

A gmail account will work in TB if it's set up correctly, but you started this topic about the inability to send from your AT&T account over the twc smtp.

sfhowes,

I'll try the secure mail key, as you have helped me to understand it.

I brought up gmail only because I'm wondering if simply hauling down the flag and surrendering might be easier in the long run. I know gmail works, because I have two accounts with it that have run through Thunderbird with never a problem. I've just had this other email address much longer, which means changing it would involve informing everyone plus a whole bunch of email address changes to the accounts listed on my alphabetical index of online accounts.

Thanks again.

You can always go to gmail webmail settings and have it collect mail to the sbcglobal account, and also make the sbc account a 'send as' account which sends from TB through the gmail smtp, without gmail substituting the gmail account. But that might be more complex than you wish.

sfhowes,

This is a good illustration of why us tech semi-literates need expert input . . . and thanks again.

Let me go look at the settings and think about the implications. That might be a way to avoid having to do a changeover like a 10-alarm fire, all in a heated rush.

One thing: Maybe it is clear on the gmail webmail settings, but does a sender know about the reroute, or does he/she think it is still the way it always was, and when someone receives an email sent this way, does it still have the original email address showing?