BT Keeps 'losing' My Email Password

I wonder how many others have been experiencing this :-

You open up Live Mail. It won't connect...it says invalid username or password even though it has worked fine for several weeks. BT Desktop Help then forces one to go through the process of setting up a new password...which of course involves being forced to go to the BTYahoo web site that I never use.

I am convinced that this whole business of losing my password is a scam to force me to visit BT Yahoo web site. A good ISP doesn't just 'lose' people's passwords.

This happens on average every 2 or 3 months.

Doesn't sound helpful. You might find things go much more smoothly if you uninstall Desktop Help.

I'm confused though. Is it the Live Mail password that is getting lost or your BT Yahoo password?
The Live Mail password has nothing to do with BT ;
and BT doesn't remember any passwords except for your BT account (including BT Yahoo email).
Neither would any other ISP.

If anything remembers your password, it is either your browser or your email client, depending how you access your emails.

It may be that Desktop Help is causing confusion by saying something like 'If you have lost your email password, visit this site."
rather than 'If you have lost your BY Yahoo email password, visit this site.". Or ...???

Edited by StephenTodd (Tue 30-Apr-13 18:09:03)

In reply to a post by StephenTodd:

Is it the Live Mail password that is getting lost or your BT Yahoo password?

I think OP means Windows Live Mail, the email client running on PC, which has no pwd of its own, just holds the pwds of all the email a/c's it is set up for.

It is not unusual for a POP3 server to play up and forget its user's pwd. It usually clears up soon.

Live Mail is connecting to my BT account, so its the actual BT account password that is being lost.

It can be working fine for weeks, and then one day I open up Live Mail and I get a 'POP' error message saying invalid user name or password.

The problem is nothing to do with BT Helpdesk itself, but thats just the tool I use to reset the password. It forces one to visit the Bt Yahoo web site to confirm that the password has been changed. Thereafter....Live Mail works fine.

So Live Mail is sending the wrong password to your BT account. I can't see what this has to do with the POP3 server.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

So Live Mail is sending the wrong password to your BT account. I can't see what this has to do with the POP3 server.

The protocol that Windows Live Mail (the application) is using to get the BT email is POP3. (this isn't the website that was at one time called Live Mail).

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

So Live Mail is sending the wrong password to your BT account. I can't see what this has to do with the POP3 server.

Equally possible is WLM is sending the right password to the BT account but the BT Mail POP3 server is failing to recognise it. I've experienced the latter but never the former unless I have mistyped a pwd into the email client .

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

unless I have mistyped a pwd into the email client .

Perhaps that's the problem here?

Unlikely!

In reply to a post by Schrodingers_Cat:

even though it has worked fine for several weeks.

My years-old BT email accounts work fine.

Have you got anything clearing cookies or anything else just before this happens?

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 30-Apr-13 22:43:18)

eMail clients and POP3 don't rely on cookies.

I use outlook and it happens to me sometimes, normally I just try a bit later and its ok

Yes, that is all it is, not a plot by BT.

I know they don't but neither do they all automatically remember them.

Hence my edit when my mistake hit me, to add "or anything else". There are other ways of having passwords remembered.

But it almost certainly is a red herring . I haven't ever heard of an email client such as Outlook forgetting a password it has previously remembered though. Nor a mail server having temporary memory loss. So I was applying the Sherlock Holmes principle.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 30-Apr-13 23:57:45)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Nor a mail server having temporary memory loss.

Orange POP3 Server "forgets" user ID/pwd perhaps twice a year, so it can happen. Probably server partially down/up. Overcome by just waiting it out or switching POP3 server, of which they have several.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

but neither do they all automatically remember them.

True! TELNET 110 never remembers them. Nor does it hide them .

Edited by XRaySpeX (Wed 01-May-13 00:25:53)

Outlook has numerous bugs if running with two or more accounts that can cause password issues.

Live Mail not so sure, but most likely a timeout or handshake reporting as a failed username/password

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Live Mail not so sure, but most likely a timeout or handshake reporting as a failed username/password

Seems to be an inherent feature of BT Yahoo POP3 email to fail to connect, and the misleading Microsoft error message leads people to change passwords they can't remember and messing the whole thing up.

This is a constant issue to BT email users, especially those who receive large attachments.

I have seen the odd issue where an antivirus product scanning incoming email causes a problem, but I have set a couple of people up with Gmail accounts (that they aren't aware of) to collect their BT email then they POP3 it from Gmail as before but much more reliably.

What happens if they have a problem after you are hit by a bus?

In reply to a post by yarwell:

Seems to be an inherent feature of BT Yahoo POP3 email to fail to connect, and the misleading Microsoft error message leads people to change passwords they can't remember and messing the whole thing up.

Yes, Live Mail is just the latest incarnation of the POP3/IMAP client that originally shipped with IE3.0 and was then called "Internet Mail and News". Most people know it as Outlook Express but its EXE name was then "MSIMN.EXE" - sadly no relation to the full "Outlook" product.

Its a silly lack of detail in the design bug, where any POP3 error message throws up the password dialog, even if the password is actually correct :-/

I use Thunderbird for POP3 access to several email accounts. Occasionally the login credentials for BT or Orange.net will fail for a while but start working again later. They've both been like that for as long as I can remember. It doesn't happen very often, but often enough that I've noticed. I can't remember what error message Thunderbird reports though.

Other accounts like Gmail and Lineone.net (now Talktalk) just seem to work without password problems.

Also I didn't notice until recently that BT has more than one POP3 server, or at least more than one name for the server. I was trying to enable connection security which never worked on pop3.btinternet.com and found mail.btinternet.com which does support POP3 with SSL/TLS security. It will be interesting to see whether this setup is more reliable.

Exactly! No big deal!

I can't remember the msg either, but thought it was just "Server not responding".

Orange also has at least 4 POP3 servers: pop.freeserve.net, pop.freeserve.co.uk, pop.wanadoo.co.uk, pop.orangehome.co.uk, all with diff IPs. Indeed I set my wife up with 3 OE a/c's with diff POP3 as this problem occurred more with her than myself, but now hasn't happened for ages.

I've had the odd Gmail fail through TBird, I usually just hit the Get Messages button, sometimes that works other times it fails, if latter usually a problem with the server rather than the Username/password.

In the old days both Firefox & Thunderbird DID lose passwords frequently, but haven't noticed it lately.

Why would it send the wrong password when it's a stored password ? Once it is set up, one never actually re-enters it. I don't type the password every time I go into Live Mail. And my PC hasn't lost or erased it, as I can see in the POP error window that there is a password there. What's more, typing in the password again makes no difference.

Lol......if it's a server problem, it is mighty strange how me changing my email password can 'fix' a remote sever problem ! I'd day Mulder and Scully would be interested !

Live Mail can give me a password error for an hour or more, yet the minute I do the process of changing the password ( which involves confirmation via BTYahoo web site ) it all works. Never once does the BTYahoo mail site say there is still a problem.

Maybe it has just failed to authenticate because something else has stopped working and the error message really means "try again later" ?

That doesn't explain why one can try again later and it still fails, yet the minute one changes the password ( or indeed reset it to the same password, which is what I do ) it all works fine.

The process of 'changing' it involves being forced to visit the BT Yahoo web site to 'confirm' the change.

I can understand the server simply not working. But I've never heard of changing one's password making a remote server start working.

Maybe your password is being entered wrongly by someone else, thereby locking your account?

if a database entry with your password in became corrupted, leading to read errors that broke the POP3 process, then resetting it to update the database entry would logically fix it.

Be interesting to try a POP3 login from telnet to see what the error messages are...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/187785

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Maybe it has just failed to authenticate because something else has stopped working and the error message really means "try again later" ?

Generally that is the case

I too have this problem. The helpline says it is nothing to do with them. As my Ipad is also blocked in the same way, it must be a BT problem. I am wondering if they want me to use BT mail which I hate. Only way is to switch isp I suppose