Xtra email no longer receives on Outlook 2003 / Outlook 2011 for MAC

Forums › Spark New Zealand › Xtra email no longer receives on Outlook 2003 / Outlook 2011 for MAC

lNomNoml

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# 207942 20-Jan-2017 10:27

Can anyone confirm if they are having issues receiving email on either Outlook 2003 / Outlook 2011 for MAC, sending email seems to work fine but receiving does not work at all, I have a few clients who we have had to move to different email programs to try and resolve this issue.

Anyone work or confirmation from Spark on this please?

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# 1706334 20-Jan-2017 11:28

Update: I have phoned Spark and they have confirmed that Yahoo has stropped support for Outlook 2011 for MAC and older and Outlook 2003 and older for PC.

Darwall

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# 1706390 20-Jan-2017 13:45

So it seems to affect Outlook Express and older Outlook XP too, we have been busy installing updated clients like Thunderbird on computers to get them up and running.

After contacting Spark have confirmed to us that they wont be fixing this issue and upgrading the client is the only way to get emails working again. Good fun!!

Can spark really do this? ? refuse to fix it?

Andib

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# 1706413 20-Jan-2017 13:50

Dropping outlook 2011 for mac is a d*ck move as it's not *that* old.

I can fully understand dropping Outlook 2003 / XP / Express though. These these are coming up 15+ years old and horribly insecure which imo shouldn't be used any more.

michaelmurfy

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# 1706414 20-Jan-2017 13:50

Darwall:

Can spark really do this? ? refuse to fix it?

The answer is Yes. People shouldn't be using outdated and unsupported mail clients for the sake of security. It is on the same league as dropping support for older versions of Internet Explorer with some websites. I would say that when Spark moves their mail back to NZ it'll work again but people should be using up-to-date mail clients regardless. As for Outlook for Mac 2011 I believe this follows the same rules as Outlook 2003 for fetching mail.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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Darwall

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# 1706417 20-Jan-2017 13:55

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Yes you are correct, no one should be using these out of date clients, but it doesn't stop the fact they loads of people are.

They seem to all come out of the woods after hibernation, clients we haven't seen for a decade! :)

We are talking about elderly people who have to learn new software and "re train their life long habits"

Darwall

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# 1706421 20-Jan-2017 14:00

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Lets talk security, there are loads of ISPs that are still using port 110 non ssl plain text passwords..... even using the latest Outlook 2016 is not going to save you from hacking...

mattwnz

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# 1706422 20-Jan-2017 14:04

Do you mean they have stopped providing customer support for those older versions, or are they blocking people's access?

Darwall

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# 1706425 20-Jan-2017 14:08

Spark's or Yahoo's mail servers are not accepting the security "hand shaking" that older clients use to communicate. So yes I guess if you can't use them then it isn't support by them any more.

Darwall

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# 1706430 20-Jan-2017 14:12

Does anyone know if Xtra are using SMX pop servers yet? or is this still Yahoo's?

yitz

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# 1706438 20-Jan-2017 14:43

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Darwall:
Does anyone know if Xtra are using SMX pop servers yet? or is this still Yahoo's?

Yes it looks like they have been switched over to SMX.

pop3.xtra.co.nz is an alias for pop3.tmo.xtra.co.nz.

pop3.tmo.xtra.co.nz has address 210.55.143.65

So it seems it is their own servers configured to not accept connections from older clients.

If they had planned to do this all along they could have just said so at the start, not sure why they are suddenly adding this into the mix at such a late stage.

mattwnz

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# 1706444 20-Jan-2017 14:50

Darwall:

Yes you are correct, no one should be using these out of date clients, but it doesn't stop the fact they loads of people are.

They seem to all come out of the woods after hibernation, clients we haven't seen for a decade! :)

We are talking about elderly people who have to learn new software and "re train their life long habits"

Outlooks 2011 isn't that old. Many businesses are still using outlook 2010 on the PC, which is older, but I presume isn't affected by this. In order to upgrade to the new version , don't people have to move to a subscription, even though they may have spent $500+ on the office software for lifetime ownership. I guess it is a good reason to switch away from extra to a service like gmail which supports it, or to go webbased only. I have helped several elderly people with their computing, and they really do struggle moving to another email system.

I wonder if this is due to the SMX servers. Although my xtra account still seems to be saving emails to yahoos servers, and I can access them via the yahoo app.

richms

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# 1706448 20-Jan-2017 14:57

Is this just as a result of them dropping support for older ssl types or something higher up in the protocol that old outlook doesnt support that is now needed?

Richard rich.ms

mattwnz

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# 1706450 20-Jan-2017 15:00

richms:

Is this just as a result of them dropping support for older ssl types or something higher up in the protocol that old outlook doesnt support that is now needed?

I am wondering if it is detecting the version being used when it does the handshake, and is blocking it based on that. I mean POP, IMAP, SSL etc are universal, and should be able to be used in most email software

yitz

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# 1706470 20-Jan-2017 15:33

I'm guessing they have done something to try prevent mail clients from downloading 20 years worth of messages.

mattwnz

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# 1706496 20-Jan-2017 16:27

yitz: I'm guessing they have done something to try prevent mail clients from downloading 20 years worth of messages.

Although the version wouldn't stop that. Prior to using Yahoo for their mailbox, I recall the old xtra email system only having about 20MB of storage. The problem is really with these services that offer almost unlimited email, and when they download a copy of all the messages being stored, that is potentially a lot of resources being used.

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