Yay Thunderbird! I have been a very satisfied user since almost the beginning, now on 91.12.0. Easy customizability of everything for someone with limited IT competence is wonderful, especially supported by the informed and ever-helpful user group.
For many years, I have had accounts with three different e-mail hosts (if that's the right term) in one T'bird setup, all feeding into shared local folders. One of the hosts is AOL; the other two are shared-server domains that I own. In the Outgoing Servers (SMTP) list, I had three servers - one for each domain.
I also had several aliases/identities for the non-AOL accounts. Some of these had as TLD a fourth domain, with no site or e-mail accounts, but with a catch-all to forward e-mail to one of the "real" accounts. This had several convenience and security advantages, including the ability to make a new throwaway alias for any suspect on-line business.
These were set up in Manage Identities with the alias address in the Email Address box, rather than in the Reply-to Address line. While sophisticated users could easily find my real addresses in the full header, it almost completely eliminated spam and spoofing for the more valuable real addresses.
A week ago, everything went pear-shaped. Could still receive on all accounts, but couldn't send from any, including AOL. Spent hours with the domain host, and found that there *might* have been some kind of change in their security protocols. I'm now running fine on AOL and one of my own domains; can't get the other working no matter how many times I delete and reinstall the account. It also seems that I may need to enter a separate SMTP server entry for every e-mail address (about twenty), with the specific e-mail account name, to be able to send. That will make for a long "Account Settings" list, but if that's the only way, so be it.
Worse, aliases/identities whose TLD does not match the actual e-mail account seem to be blocked from sending. I don't know enough to tell if the issue is with Thunderbird, my ISP, the domain host or some other link in the chain.
Has something changed in Thunderbird? My shared-hosting provider says everything's correct at their end. Any advice or information would be welcome. Thanks!
Aliases with different TLD?
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tanstaafl
- Moderator
- Posts: 49647
- Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm
Re: Aliases with different TLD?
My impression is that 91.12.0 is pretty mature (might be the last update for 91.*), its 102.1.1 that is having teething problems/surprises.
There are been several recent support threads about problems with Yahoo/AOL. I added a Yahoo IMAP account to another profile yesterday and was able to create the OAuth2 token, though it was disturbing that it used r.casalemedia.com to do that and displayed multiple ads in the Oauth2 popup. Since Verizon combined Yahoo/AOL under Oath Inc. they've gone (even further) downhill. Some people are really attached to AOL but I suggest you consider an alternative if you stuck with it mainly out of inertia.
If your other email addresses use the same password (and email provider) as your existing account then you want to use multiple identities, not additional accounts for them.
Don't overlook using plus addressing if your main goal for multiple identities is to be able to better deal with spam. i.e. if your email address is somebody@domain.tld you can on the fly decide to use somebody+some_string@domain.tld when sending. "some_string" might be the name of a company you give your address to. Any mail sent to that address goes to the normal inbox (ignores the extra string). If you get spam sent to that address you know who to blame and can create a message filter to block any mail sent to that address.
Not every email provider supports plus addressing but its been supported by major email providers such as gmail long enough that its unusual to come across a email provider that doesn't support it.
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/arti ... addressing
"Worse, aliases/identities whose TLD does not match the actual e-mail account seem to be blocked from sending"
I've seen that with some email providers. They require you to register the additional From: email addresses for the smtp server using the webmail settings. Perhaps AOL made that change recently.
Normally webmail uses shared libraries to send, not the smtp server. So some limitations/restrictions that you run across with Thunderbird might not effect you when sending using webmail.
There are been several recent support threads about problems with Yahoo/AOL. I added a Yahoo IMAP account to another profile yesterday and was able to create the OAuth2 token, though it was disturbing that it used r.casalemedia.com to do that and displayed multiple ads in the Oauth2 popup. Since Verizon combined Yahoo/AOL under Oath Inc. they've gone (even further) downhill. Some people are really attached to AOL but I suggest you consider an alternative if you stuck with it mainly out of inertia.
If your other email addresses use the same password (and email provider) as your existing account then you want to use multiple identities, not additional accounts for them.
Don't overlook using plus addressing if your main goal for multiple identities is to be able to better deal with spam. i.e. if your email address is somebody@domain.tld you can on the fly decide to use somebody+some_string@domain.tld when sending. "some_string" might be the name of a company you give your address to. Any mail sent to that address goes to the normal inbox (ignores the extra string). If you get spam sent to that address you know who to blame and can create a message filter to block any mail sent to that address.
Not every email provider supports plus addressing but its been supported by major email providers such as gmail long enough that its unusual to come across a email provider that doesn't support it.
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/arti ... addressing
"Worse, aliases/identities whose TLD does not match the actual e-mail account seem to be blocked from sending"
I've seen that with some email providers. They require you to register the additional From: email addresses for the smtp server using the webmail settings. Perhaps AOL made that change recently.
Normally webmail uses shared libraries to send, not the smtp server. So some limitations/restrictions that you run across with Thunderbird might not effect you when sending using webmail.
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Cten
- Posts: 16
- Joined: January 13th, 2015, 2:13 pm
Re: Aliases with different TLD?
Many thanks to tanstaafl for this detailed reply, as informative and useful as others you've been kind enough to provide me and so many others. A few comments and additional questions, if I may:
> Some people are really attached to AOL but I suggest you consider an alternative if you stuck with it mainly out of inertia.
Frankly, I dislike AOL. (Eternal September...) But they took over Verizon and my legacy accounts there. I've been using those addresses on various forums for a long time, and prefer to keep them going to receive communications from other forum users. Your advice did, however make me realize that I only send from two of the accounts. So while I've created nine AOL POP accounts in Thunderbird, only two have SMTP servers.
> If your other email addresses use the same password (and email provider) as your existing account then you want to use multiple identities, not additional accounts for them.
Call me paranoid, but I've found it more comfortable to use a different password for every account of any kind. But in the interest of simplicity, I have condensed a couple of dozen accounts to just a few, with lots of aliases/identities, so the SMTP list is still manageable.
> Don't overlook using plus addressing if your main goal for multiple identities is to be able to better deal with spam.
Though there are other reasons, that was indeed the main one. And I'd never heard of plus adressing. Just tested it, and it seems to be tolerated by both AOL and my domain host. A great tool - THANK YOU!
With your help, I have now completely rebuilt my e-mail system, and almost everything tests fine. A minor glitch: Thunderbird seems to make its own choice of SMTP servers sometimes, over-riding what I put in and even swapping user accounts. Easy fix, so only a minor annoyance. Remaining issue, which the new setup also makes not so important, is that I cannot send out via SMTP at all on one of my two shared-hosting accounts. It downloads POP mail OK, and webmail works fine. So I must still be missing a setup item in Thunderbird.
I have one deep concern remaining that has nothing to do with Thunderbird. When things unraveled a week ago, for no obvious reason, the host said that I need to use unencrypted passwords and disable connection security. Could that possibly be either safe or necessary? It's a respecting hosting company, but seems like a feature that's pretty necessary these days. Others' thoughts welcome. I have a help ticket in to ask about that.
Thanks again to a great moderator and an invaluable forum.
> Some people are really attached to AOL but I suggest you consider an alternative if you stuck with it mainly out of inertia.
Frankly, I dislike AOL. (Eternal September...) But they took over Verizon and my legacy accounts there. I've been using those addresses on various forums for a long time, and prefer to keep them going to receive communications from other forum users. Your advice did, however make me realize that I only send from two of the accounts. So while I've created nine AOL POP accounts in Thunderbird, only two have SMTP servers.
> If your other email addresses use the same password (and email provider) as your existing account then you want to use multiple identities, not additional accounts for them.
Call me paranoid, but I've found it more comfortable to use a different password for every account of any kind. But in the interest of simplicity, I have condensed a couple of dozen accounts to just a few, with lots of aliases/identities, so the SMTP list is still manageable.
> Don't overlook using plus addressing if your main goal for multiple identities is to be able to better deal with spam.
Though there are other reasons, that was indeed the main one. And I'd never heard of plus adressing. Just tested it, and it seems to be tolerated by both AOL and my domain host. A great tool - THANK YOU!
With your help, I have now completely rebuilt my e-mail system, and almost everything tests fine. A minor glitch: Thunderbird seems to make its own choice of SMTP servers sometimes, over-riding what I put in and even swapping user accounts. Easy fix, so only a minor annoyance. Remaining issue, which the new setup also makes not so important, is that I cannot send out via SMTP at all on one of my two shared-hosting accounts. It downloads POP mail OK, and webmail works fine. So I must still be missing a setup item in Thunderbird.
I have one deep concern remaining that has nothing to do with Thunderbird. When things unraveled a week ago, for no obvious reason, the host said that I need to use unencrypted passwords and disable connection security. Could that possibly be either safe or necessary? It's a respecting hosting company, but seems like a feature that's pretty necessary these days. Others' thoughts welcome. I have a help ticket in to ask about that.
Thanks again to a great moderator and an invaluable forum.
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tanstaafl
- Moderator
- Posts: 49647
- Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm
Re: Aliases with different TLD?
Thanks for the kind words.
"for no obvious reason, the host said that I need to use unencrypted passwords and disable connection security. Could that possibly be either safe or necessary?"
Nope. That means your email address, username and password are sent in the clear, over the Internet. That's not safe.
The only reasons I can think of to drop support for a secure connection is they don't want to spend the money to support that configuration anymore (i.e. pay to renew certificates, deal with the extra support issues etc.) or something really messed up their support for secure connections and they don't want to admit it while trying to fix it.
If they don't give you a good reason (reply to your support ticket) I suggest you find a different hosting company (or a company that is just a email provider such as MXRoute.com or mailo.com). https://www.emaildiscussions.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8 is a good place to ask suggestions for email hosting/providers.
"for no obvious reason, the host said that I need to use unencrypted passwords and disable connection security. Could that possibly be either safe or necessary?"
Nope. That means your email address, username and password are sent in the clear, over the Internet. That's not safe.
The only reasons I can think of to drop support for a secure connection is they don't want to spend the money to support that configuration anymore (i.e. pay to renew certificates, deal with the extra support issues etc.) or something really messed up their support for secure connections and they don't want to admit it while trying to fix it.
If they don't give you a good reason (reply to your support ticket) I suggest you find a different hosting company (or a company that is just a email provider such as MXRoute.com or mailo.com). https://www.emaildiscussions.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8 is a good place to ask suggestions for email hosting/providers.