Written Words has whined about
technological bugs before, but here’s a warning: don’t always believe the
network when it tells you it does not recognize your password.
I have gone through this problem
periodically: I come down to the computer in the morning, try to check my
email, and get a message that either the password is incorrect or that the
server does not recognize my outgoing (smtp) password.
This always mystifies me, because the email
had been working perfectly the night before. When this has happened in the
past, I have logged into the self-service site of the affected ISP and updated
my password. Then I have to go to all my devices that can access email and
change them, too. Then I have to update my secure, written list of all my
passwords, because there are only so many words that combine letters, numbers
and special characters, and don’t reference names of family, friends, pets or
places I’ve lived, and are easy to remember.
It’s a process bound to create confusion.
When the problem occurs again, and I have to enter the old passwords and then a
new password.
And it begs the question: why did the
server no longer recognize the password? I did not change it. It worked the
night before, but stopped the next morning.
The latest time this happened, I tried
re-entering the password, which did not solve the problem. I logged into the
webmail program, and that worked fine. So I called my service provider. After
waiting on hold, listening to lame music and enduring the repeated “We
apologize for any inconvenience” recording, I explained the situation to the
technician.
I looked at the email client, and an email
had come in while I was on hold. But clicking Get Mail still gave me the error
message that the server did not recognize my password.
“I don’t see any problem on my end,” the
technician said. “Let me check something else.” She put me on hold for another
five minutes. When she came back, she suggested I try sending a test email.
“But don’t put ‘test’ into the message or subject line. We sometimes get
problems with that.”
I did. And guess what? The message went
through.
I did not change any settings. I did not
reset the passwords.
“We are migrating our servers. Perhaps that
caused a glitch,” the technician suggested.
Then, as if by magic, the email clients on
all my devices connected with the email server, and messages started coming in.
Tip
So here’s my tip: when you get an error
message that your email account information is wrong, and you know you didn’t change
anything, don’t go through the process of changing all your email passwords on
all your devices and remote connections. Call your ISP and just wait for a
while. See if an hour’s wait doesn’t solve the problem. Changing all your
passwords should be a last resort.
What about you techies? Do you have an
explanation for this, or alternative solutions?
