Re: Can I hire someone to fix my Gnus? (contd)

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

Joseph Fineman via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mail source (pop :server pop.verizon.net :port 995 :user
>   joe_f@verizon.net :password ********) error (-ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server
>   error - Please try again later.).  Continue? (yes or no) no
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is *not* a Gnus solution but maybe it will help (maybe not).

Sometime in November, Verizon/AOL sent a piece of email saying that
there was going to be a change in their authentication method and that
you had to go through some hoops to make sure that you could continue
using their "service". Out of the mostly unacceptable choices (reading
mail through the AOL website was one of those), they had a method for
their second-tier choices (Thunderbird among them, but certainly not
Gnus, which they cannot even spell).  It involved deleting the
verizon.net account in Thunderbird and letting it recreate it
automatically (allegedly, the automatic method knew the secret
handshake). I did that before their deadline (Dec. 18 2021 or
thereabouts) and ten days later could not authenticate to either send
or receive mail.

It turned out that they got it wrong (what's new?) and the only way
you can still connect with Thunderbird (at least on the desktop) is to
get an app-specific password by logging into their website and
following some links, and then cutting-and-pasting that password into
Thunderbird.

I suspect that you'll have to do a similar thing for Gnus.  Here's a link
with the instructions I followed:

    https://forums.verizon.com/t5/Verizon-net-Email/Configure-Thunderbird-for-Verizon-net-email/m-p/911835#M28991

Note that the post was provided by a user, not an AOL employee.

Hope this helps.

I have been planning for a long time to change my email service away
from Verizon/AOL. I have heard good things about Fastmail, so I will
be giving them a try: we'll see, but they can hardly be worse than
AOL.

-- 
Nick