On Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 14:28:18, VanguardLH wrote (my
responses usually follow points raised):
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

My blind friends have been using the "Eudora" email client for many
years, and it still works; however, it is beginning to have problems,
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read about Pandora, which was claimed to be very usable by those used to
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I just told my friends about it, to let them if they wanted have a look
and decide. (We've been burned by a claimed replacement before.)

Julia has downloaded, installed, and configured it (she's quite computer
literate), and quite likes it; however, she can't get it to _send_
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http://255soft.uk/temp/Clipboard01.jpg shows the configuration window,
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"If available, use StartTLS" means the client will use TLS if the server
reports back StartTLS in its keyword status response. This is a
drop-down list of choices which could be:

- Don't use a secure connection.
- Use TLS/SSL if available.
- Force use of SSL/TLS.

That's almost exactly the three options offered BY PANDORA, which is
what we are trying to use. Eudora is working fine, and is using a
setting with "if available" in it.
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before it gets ratified; however, TLS 1.3 came out long after Eudora got
abandoned.

I appreciate the effort you've put into explaining, but a lot of it
seems to be the wrong way round: our situation is that Eudora - the
ancient client - IS WORKING, but Pandora - the new one we're trying to
switch to, for a bit of future-proofing - ISN'T. (For sending. It's
receiving fine.)
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Been too long since I used Windows XP to remember just when Microsoft
pushed some Windows updates that removed only some of the weakest
ciphers. When the problem was discovered, their first recommendation
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You might have to use sTunnel as a local proxy through which you make
your secure connections with your clients that are too old to support
the later encryption schemes. Unlike Eudora, sTunnel is still

No, old Eudora is working fine; newer Pandora isn't. It's Pandora we'd
like to use, though.
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If you don't want to go through all that hassle then you'll need to
consider if you really need encryption connections with an old e-mail
client. You could the other settings to see if those work. "If

See above!
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As for OAUTH2 authentication, that uses tokens (refresh and access) from
the server. Once you get a token, the login credentials are no longer
used. However, the access token expires, and the refresh token (with a
far longer expiration) is used to get another access token from the
server supposedly without any user intervention. While this is supposed

Well, when I tried it, the log message implied it wasn't recognised
(though Paul says logs don't necessarily tell the truth). However, I
don't think Eudora has OAuth2, and that's working, so presumably
TalkTalk don't require it.
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I just checked. OAUTH2 didn't come out until 2013. So, your client

So Eudora - which is working - is definitely not using it, so therefore
TalkTalk don't require it.

must be using OAUTH1 although that didn't show up until 2009. Could be
the e-mail provider no longer support OAUTH1 (circa 2009). That your
client supports OAUTH any version means it must've gotten some
maintenance since 2006. If Eudora did indeed stop getting maintained
around 2006, I wouldn't trust its OAUTH to be reliable. Hopefully your
e-mail provider doesn't demand use of OAUTH, and they support just the
simple login schemes.

Eudora is working fine; I don't think it's had any patch. (I think we
might have had something to get round problems of security certificates,
but I don't think that had anything to do with login authentifications.)

Pandora - which I think is more or less "current" - is not working. I
think it's just a setting combination we're not using, but we haven't
hit it yet.

Presumably you already matched the settings in the client to those
specified by the e-mail provider at:

https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/...s-IMAP-amp-POP
3/ta-p/2204399

Have you looked at that, and at http://255soft.uk/temp/Clipboard01.jpg?
If you can spot something we haven't "matched", please tell me; the only
area I'm unsure of is that talktalk just show "Yes" for some settings,
whereas Pandora has more options.

Be sure to use the correct port for SMTP (sending). Port 25 was never
to be used by MUAs (Mail User Agents aka clients), and only between MTAs
(Mail Transfer Agents aka servers), but it got used anyway by clients.
Many e-mail providers moved to port 587, and that's what MUAs are to
use. There was a period where they allowed both during a rather long
grace period, but many have now completed switch to 587 for client
connections.

We're using 587.

It's been a long time since it's happened to me again, but in the past
the provider wanted to ensure a human was using their e-mail service.
When using their webmail client, they would interrupt the login with an
interstitial page asking for validationg a human was using the service.

Old Eudora is working, so I don't think a check of that nature is being
done.
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I don't think talktalk would anyway - they're one of the UK's biggest
ISPs, and though like everyone else I think they'd love us all to use
webmail or at least IMAP, I suspect they have enough customers using
clients (such as Thunderbird) that there'd be quite a stink if they did
that sort of thing. (POP/IMAP's irrelevant anyway as that's for
receiving, which is working; it's sending, presumably with SMTP as
that's in the server name, that isn't - in Pandora.)

Oh, did you ever try disabling e-mail interrogation by whatever
anti-malware software that is installed on the computer? That uses a
transparent proxy to interrogate the e-mail traffic. If that proxy
becomes unresponsive, you won't get or send any e-mails. If the proxy
takes a long time to interrogate the e-mail traffic, it will cause
timeouts at the client (on receive) or server (on send). Usually you
can just disable e-mail inspection in the AV to test if that is causing
the problem. However, likely the e-mail traffic still goes through the
proxy but without interrogation, and if there is a problem with the
proxy then there will be a problem with your e-mails. You could try
disabling e-mail scanning in the AV and reboot. If that doesn't work,
reconfigure the AV to *not* inspect the e-mail traffic (which is
superfluous, anyway, and provides no additional protection), reboot, and
retest without their proxy linked into the path for your e-mail traffic.

I can't remember if Julia has email scanning - I think not - or any
other intermediary (she used Mailwasher at one point I do remember); but
whether she is or not, if that was the problem, I presume it would stop
old Eudora sending, which it isn't doing.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die -
attributed to Carrie Fisher by Gareth McLean, in Radio Times 28 January-3
February 2012