POP goes my email

[EddieB]

I have a business account with BT, which covers broadband and includes multiple mailboxes that I've set up (different usernames of the form xxx.xxx@btconnect.com).  Until now, these email accounts are generally accessed through Thunderbird, which has the advantage that multiple accounts can be accessed and managed simultaneously on the same device (along with various other features).  The accounts were configured within Thunderbird using POP/SMTP protocols.

 

I gather that Microsoft has decided to stop supporting "basic" authentication (i.e. POP, IMAP, SMTP) and consequently BT are now migrating to "modern" authentication.  Such that email accounts appear to be accessible only via a web browser (such as outlook.office.com).  Aside from losing the some of the management functions of Thunderbird, it seems that such browsers will only allow one account to be logged in from a single device at any time.  BT give no help or support for third-party email programs such as Thunderbird.

 

In trying to find if there's a fix to configure Thunderbird to work with the new protocols, I soon get swamped in a sea of acronyms and jargon - and I thought I had reasonable technical ability up till now.

 

Please - is there a work around (simple, hopefully), as I'm quite attached to Thunderbird? 

[AndrueC]

That seems an unlikely restriction - do you have a link to an article describing the change?

 

It seems more likely that BT would be dropping unencrypted connections and they might also no longer support the older negotiated encryption method but I find it hard to believe that they are dropping either POP3 or IMAP completely. I suppose maybe they might drop POP3 due to its age and lack of modern features. IMAP is typically a better choice than POP3 since it supports instantaneous notification of incoming mail and the ability to access a mailbox from multiple devices without losing synchronisation.

 

Dropping either POP3 or IMAP sounds like a lot of work for them and will only annoy and inconvenience people such as yourself. I find it hard to believe anyone sells an email server suite that doesn't support those two.

Edited May 23, 2023 by AndrueC

[EddieB]

Thanks, Andrue.  Here's the message/warning from BT (emphasis added):

 

Hello,

In the past, as part of a BT Business service you’ve subscribed to, we’ve provided you with Business Email Lite powered by Microsoft® Office 365 mailboxes free of charge, xxxxxxx@btconnect.com. Depending on the service you subscribed to, you may have had multiple mailboxes.

These mailboxes use the POP protocol that was designed and created in the 1980s – and like many things, email has moved on since then, especially in terms of security.

‍
What’s going to happen?
From xx/xx/2023, the security of your email service will be improved, meaning that you’ll only be able to access your mailbox by logging into Microsoft via a web browser at outlook.office.com, or by using the mobile Outlook app from a mobile phone or tablet. If you login to your mailbox through your BT manage services page, this will still be available as it directs to outlook.office.com.

 

Any other ways you use to access and send your BT email, including email clients, may stop working as Microsoft won’t be supporting them anymore.

 

Why the need for change?

The POP method of sending and receiving email is being wound down across the industry, as there are more secure ways of sending and receiving email.

 

A UK business is successfully hacked every 19 seconds. We take your online security, and your customers’, very seriously - and with that in mind, we’re removing POP email from our services, as there’s more secure ways of sending and receiving email now. Your service will become Outlook Web Access.

 

So, what should you do?
 

If you are impacted by it, or want to look at the options available visit bt.com/business/btconnectemail for more information.

For more information on the changes from Microsoft, please visit their website link.

Microsoft will be further improving the security of your btconnect.com mailboxes, with the introduction of Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) set to follow later this year. We will write to you again (from this email address) to remind you that its coming.

Thanks
Your BT Team 

 

My "loyalty" with BT is purely because of the multiple email accounts.  If I have to set up new accounts because of the inconvenience and lack of support with our existing accounts, then it will be time to find a new Broadband provider.

[AndrueC]

Ouch. Interesting that it doesn't mention IMAP.

[AndrueC]

Some interesting comments here:

 

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/loss-of-pop3-access-for-btconnectcom-email/a9c902fc-a432-420a-ab7c-9f994a5fd3d8

 

So it sounds like BT had their own front-end servers which they have decided to switch off. You do get slightly better security this way because OWA (the protocol MS would prefer you to use) supports MFA (multi-factor authentication). But as long as your email client is only accessed from a computer that has MFA enabled on user login that doesn't make much difference. Also some email clients support MFA (This article shows how to configure later versions Thunderbird). It's unclear why IMAP or POP3 can't be enabled on the MS server product  behind this service (Exchange most certainly supports them and likely always will) but that there is an OWA plugin for Thunderbird if that helps.

 

All in all it sounds like BT have pulled the plug on a service to save money and just thrown you to the kerb with no help. My advice would be for you to buy own domain and switch to a better email provider. It's going to be a nuisance but to be honest @<my company name>.co.uk looks more professional than @btinternet.com and once you have your own domain you can switch hosts as/when you feel like it.

 

If you already have your own domain and use it for email then just switch email providers. There's plenty to choose from. The only thing you'll need to do is archive any messages you want to keep.

Edited May 23, 2023 by AndrueC

[melmerby]

I'm using Plusnet which is a BT subsidary. I'm also using Thunderbird.

I've got two mailboxes with a distinctive part of the address*, (multiple mailboxes are standard with Plusnet) it uses POP and I haven't heard anything from them.

They go to two different PCs

 

 

*<Anything you Like>@<account address>.plus.com

[J. S. Bach]

I use mail.com to send emails as I have a problem with T-bird sending stuff, it receives them fine. Mail.com offers multiple addresses and domains; best of all, the basic service is free.

 

And to quote Melmerby "and I haven't heard anything from them" neither have I from mail.com. Yet!

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by J. S. Bach
To do a minor edit.

[Reorte]

14 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I'm using Plusnet which is a BT subsidary. I'm also using Thunderbird.

I've got two mailboxes with a distinctive part of the address*, (multiple mailboxes are standard with Plusnet) it uses POP and I haven't heard anything from them.

They go to two different PCs

 

 

*<Anything you Like>@<account address>.plus.com

I note that the OP has a business account rather than a personal one, there may well be a difference there.

 

I suspect Plusnet are using their own systems from before they were bought by BT. I'm also with Plusnet, and nothing there (although I'm thinking of moving away, if I can tolerate the painful hassle of changing my email address everywhere, because there's no way to keep both my phone number and get a decent connection now that FTTP is available).

[EddieB]

19 minutes ago, Reorte said:

I note that the OP has a business account rather than a personal one, there may well be a difference there.

The difference is that you don't spend ages in a queue listening to music when you call the "help" desk.

 

Ok, after having wasted half my day (no thanks to BT!), I think I have a solution!

 

Remove and reinstall the email client in Thunderbird (as it won't let you change the server type, i.e. from POP to something else).  From the available configs, choose Exchange/Office365 cloud services.  It then prompts a secondary Microsoft web log in (email account and password) and the purchase of an interface application - OWL was recommended, at an annual subscription of €10.  (Though it seems it requires one purchase for all accounts on one machine).

 

My Thunderbird mail folders are now a bit of a mess, but emails are coming through again. 

 

Thank you for all who responded.  No idea how sound/future-proof the fix turns out to be, but maybe of help to others here.

Edited May 23, 2023 by EddieB

[woodenhead]

My ISP moved off POP a long time ago and I've been using Imap to connect Thunderbird to them and Microsoft.

 

The big benefit (for me) of IMAP is that you are not downloading emails off the inbox, you are viewing your inbox served from your ISP or Microsoft as if you were viewing it online via a browser.  So you can look at your inboxes from a variety of sources and all are synced (i.e. for me phone, online and Thunderbird are all synced as one).

 

Here is a description of the difference:

POP3 downloads an email from the server and then deletes it. IMAP stores the email on the server and syncs it across several devices to access over multiple channels. POP3 does not allow you to organize emails in the mail server mailbox, while IMAP allows you to organize the server mailbox.

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

if I can tolerate the painful hassle of changing my email address everywhere, because there's no way to keep both my phone number and get a decent connection now that FTTP is available).

I've found the 80Mb/s fibre I originally signed up for (actual speed was a v. good 74Mb/s) is now twic the price and considerably slower due to contention.

Unfortunately BT Openreach who supply the telecoms for Plusnet will not be providing full fibre until "after Dec 2026"

[eastwestdivide]

I had the exact same thing* from BT for my business account as the OP. Call me old-fashioned, but I liked having multiple email accounts accessible via one email client (on both computer and phone). I spoke to them, and I'd have need to pay extra for some Exchange-related subscription thing, just to be able to get emails again on my phone email client. No IMAP under the new system.

Communication was terrible: I had a cryptic email way back last year saying the cutoff date was Nov '22, but that came and went with no change, then I got another email from them earlier this year, equally cryptic, which I then followed up to discover what was happening.

 

* one difference - as I had domain hosting as well (my own domain, not btconnect or any other BT one, for my business email), I promptly transferred the whole lot from BT to another email provider who would provide POP and IMAP.

Bit of a pain, I'd been with them ages and was on a really cheap deal, but bye-bye BT!

[eastwestdivide]

Also, there’s an advantage to having your historic emails in a nicely searchable client on your desktop versus having them only available with an internet connection and poorly-searchable web interface, and relying on Microsoft 364 or whatever it’s called this week. 
Remember “the cloud” = “someone else’s computer”

[woodenhead]

I have multiple inboxes on the one Thunderbird client, two from my ISP and one from Microsoft.

 

Downloading emails is one thing, but storing them and then backing them up so you don't risk losing them is a cost.

 

I've multiple folders to store emails I want to keep on my Thunderbird, again these are synced to the online storage.

[Reorte]

14 hours ago, melmerby said:

I've found the 80Mb/s fibre I originally signed up for (actual speed was a v. good 74Mb/s) is now twic the price and considerably slower due to contention.

Unfortunately BT Openreach who supply the telecoms for Plusnet will not be providing full fibre until "after Dec 2026"

It will still be significantly faster than the 8 MB/s I get now on ADSL (FTTC only offers 12, so it never seemed worth the extra expense).

 

As for the whole email thing it sounds like it might be time to bite the bullet, since I wouldn't be surprised if Plusnet go that way. Buying a domain so I can just switch email provider if needed (in the future) without the hassle of changing addresses has some appeal but also feels rather like overkill for personal email (I wouldn't have any other use for the domain).

Edited May 24, 2023 by Reorte

[jpendle]

6 hours ago, Reorte said:

It will still be significantly faster than the 8 MB/s I get now on ADSL (FTTC only offers 12, so it never seemed worth the extra expense).

As an aside, about 30 years ago I was on a training course in one of our US sites and the instructor, a Scottish gentleman, was talking about ISDN,DSL,& Fibre.

 

On one of his slides he had FTTC. So I asked what did that stand for, he told me I was an idiot, cos he'd just told me what it stood for.

I said I'm not an idiot you haven't told anyone in the class what FTTC stands for.

After a couple more minutes of back and forth insults it all became clear.

 

In the US the hard edge between the sidewalk and the pavement is called the Curb.

In the UK the same thing between the pavement and the road is called the Kerb.

 

John P

[melmerby]

19 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Downloading emails is one thing, but storing them and then backing them up so you don't risk losing them is a cost.

Why not just regularly save the main folder* to a back up drive?

If you lose them from normal use, you can just re-import them.

 

*the one with a random arrangement of letters and numbers in the profile folder.There may be more than one with different dates.

If you re-install Thunderbird, you can re-import the mail or start another and 'archive' the old one, which is still accessible if required.

 

[melmerby]

6 hours ago, Reorte said:

8 MB/s I get now on ADSL

8 Megabytes from ADSL?

The theoretical max is 24Mb/s from ADSL2+ which is only about 3MB/s

ADSL is 8Mb/s or about 1MB/s

FTTC is typically 80Mb/s or about 10MB/s 10 x as fast, I was getting 74Mb/s which is just over 9 Megabytes/s

[Reorte]

9 minutes ago, melmerby said:

8 Megabytes from ADSL?

The theoretical max is 24Mb/s from ADSL2+ which is only about 3MB/s

ADSL is 8Mb/s or about 1MB/s

FTTC is typically 80Mb/s or about 10MB/s 10 x as fast, I was getting 74Mb/s which is just over 9 Megabytes/s

Sorry, Mb not MB, so yes, 8 megabits per second (from ADSL2+ rather than plain ADSL). My bad.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Reorte

[melmerby]

18 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Sorry, Mb not MB, so yes, 8 megabits per second (from ADSL2+ rather than plain ADSL). My bad.

Easily done, the distinction between upper and lower case "B/b" is often a trap for the unwary!

They really should've used some different to distinguish them.

 

Yes. Fibre to Cabinet can be up to 10x fast as ADSL.

I was getting about 16Mb/s at max on ADSL2+ when I changed, that was after having to get Openreach to swap the pair from the exchange to cabinet due to faults, I was getting a much lower speed, low enough to trigger a fault ticket with Plusnet.

So the switch to fibre gave about 5x increase in speed and in was above all very consistent, day on day, hour on hour.

 

Just tried three different speedcheckers and I'm currently at 51Mb/s