"Could not connect to SMTP server" yahoo.com

[gitty1]

Hi,
All my Yahoo accounts are getting the "Could not connect to SMTP server" message immediately after pressing the 'send' button.
Gmail is fine.
This has been going on intermittently for a few weeks now.
Sometimes there are no problems for days at a time then when I think its fixed, it comes back. It really makes you appreciate it when PP works.
When this error does come on, it can last for minutes or hours or days, or just not send those emails.
I've logged into yahoo.com and sent test emails without any problems/popups.
I've substituted my email address with "EMAIL ADDRESS 1".
The following error is duplicated on all the yahoo.com accounts but only the Yahoo.com accounts.


Thanks in advance.
Jon



--- Version ---
OS: Windows 7 (x64)
POP Peeper: 4.1.1.0
Webmail: 4.1.0.0
SSL: 1.0.2.6
IMAP: 4.1.1.0
RSS: 4.1.1.0
SendMail: 4.1.1.0
Notification Voice: 4.1.1.0
Profile Picture: 4.1.1.0
Web of Trust: 4.1.1.0

--- Error ---
"EMAIL ADDRESS 1" [1000: IMAP] ['imap.mail.yahoo.com' (993) SSL: 1] [Smtp: 'smtp.mail.yahoo.com' (465) SSL: 1]
Send Mail: Could not connect to SMTP server

[mjs]

Welcome to the forum gitty1,

Your settings appear to be fine. I have not been having any similar issues myself and am unable to duplicate the problem.

If this issue persists you might try using TLS instead of SSL and see if this helps (SSL, the predecessor to TLS, should work just fine and does for me but if Yahoo is having issues with SSL on some of their servers then you may have better luck using the TLS protocol).

[gitty1]

Hi Lakrsrool,
I tried that also.
The only difference in result is that sometimes it hangs whilst saying 'transmitting' and sometimes it just comes back with the "could not connect to smtp server" after a few seconds.
I'll try different things and post back if I find what fixes it.

Cheers

[mjs]

The fact that as you say you're not having any problems of any kind using Yahoo accounts in your browser and also because this issue only involves Yahoo mail and that presumably all of your other email accounts do not have any problems would suggest that this issue does not involve your Internet connection. And with that because the problem is confined exclusively to just Yahoo coupled with the fact that using the TLS protocol instead of SSL didn't make a difference would suggest that perhaps in your specific location Yahoo may be experiencing widespread general issues with their IMAP Servers.

With this in mind and if this issue has been ongoing for some time and if you continue to experience this issue exclusively with ALL Yahoo accounts you might consider trying the following with just ONE of your Yahoo accounts; First change your Server protocol to POP3 and test that account. If this still doesn't help try switching this same Yahoo account to Yahoo's Webmail protocol ("Yahoo" Server type). If switching to either of these other protocols helps you could either wait for Yahoo to solve their problem with their servers or switch your other accounts as well. I would however add the caveat that IMAP in general is the preferred protocol to use.

Of course keep us posted on your progress.

[gitty1]

Hi,

oops.


It seems to be peerblock causing the issue.

Yahoo have probably re-routed to a different ip address that is in the list - time to do a traceroute and put it on the whitelist.
Sorry for the waste of time but thanks for posting back so quickly.
It really is appreciated.

[gitty1]

Just in case another muppet has the same problem.......

Whitelist
smtp.mail.yahoo.com = 217.146.190.250 (at the moment)

[mjs]

Aha, a 3rd-party security software issue, increasingly problematic false positives so to speak in our endeavors to stay safe connecting to the Internet can often result in unintended consequences that can take a bit of time to resolve unfortunately. I can only guess that Yahoo servers are getting blocked by PeerBlock on the basis that they are classified as "advertising" or "spyware" oriented servers. I can see where that could present a problem like this since it is my understanding that Email Clients are known to occasionally change their servers IP address.

I don't use PeerBlock myself but I understand there is an option available to always allow HTTP, which enables "global" connections to your PC Ports 80 and 443 that are used by the Web even if they are on your Blocklist (and as such defined as a "globally allowed" setting). With that in mind I'm wondering if their might also be an option to "globally" allow Ports 993 and 465 as well that are used for IMAP protocols so you wouldn't have to worry about this issue in the future. Or would that be considered too much of a compromise to the security that PeerBlock provides?

[gitty1]

Hi,
Yes, it is configurable so I just added that range of IP addresses to the whitelist.
All seems to be fine for now.

There are options to allow ports but I don't know enough about security/networking to be confident with opening them up.

Thanks - and good to see there are the relevant smilies =

[Jeff]

Ports 25 and 587 are the ports for SMTP. But if you're using peerblock, you probably don't want to open those ports up as it would defeat the purpose.

btw, Yahoo has many different IP addresses for their servers, even those that serve the same function (ie. smtp). The exact server you get could depend on your geographical location or if a server is down, etc. The IP address that smtp.mail.yahoo.com resolves to for me is 63.250.193.228. And, in fact, a person can look these IP addresses up and presume that we are in different parts of the world...

[gitty1]

Hi Jeff,
I'll have to ping smtp.mail.yahoo.com every so often or if/when the problem comes back to get the ip. No biggie.

Keep well

[mjs]

I would have thought that PeerBlock would provide some indication in the tray icon that an IP had been blocked and with that (or even if this is not the case) you could check a PeerBlock Log as to what had been recently blocked and identify the IP as Yahoo and subsequently unblock it in this manner simply using the PeerBlock interface as opposed to needing to ping in the event Pop Peeper has Yahoo mail issues in order to determine if the contents of the PeerBlock block-list is actually the cause.

Also I am curious as to what the payment subscription cost is now to maintain the block-lists for PeerBlock? (If I recall paid subscriptions have been required as of last year some time)