In this article, we will discuss a rare but frustrating issue which may present itself to AOL or Yahoo users who are trying to authenticate one of their email accounts with Mailbird. 

Occasionally, a small number of AOL or Yahoo users have reported being unable to authenticate themselves even though they have provided the correct username and password. This is for reasons beyond our control, but below is a suggested fix to this problem which stems from AOL and Yahoo's setup:

• First, sign into AOL or Yahoo via their website.
• Go to their Account Security section.
• Make sure that you have turned on the setting called Allow apps that use less secure sign in.

Now, when you try to authenticate your email account in Mailbird, you should no longer witness the failures that you encountered previously if you have enabled the option to Allow apps that use less secure sign in via AOL or Yahoo.

However, if you still cannot successfully authenticate your account, this could be for a number of different reasons, but the most likely cause is that another piece of software is preventing Mailbird from connecting to port 80. The applications which are usually responsible for blocking access to port 80 are Skype, Team Viewer, IIS, Exchange Server and SQL Server Reporting Services. We strongly suggest making sure that these have all been closed down completely via the Task Manager app.

If you are unable to establish or investigate which software is blocking port 80, then we recommend using the Username & Password authentication method, rather than OAuth in Mailbird. If you choose to use the Username & Password method to authenticate yourself, you will need to generate an app password which can then be used when you authenticate your email account in Mailbird. Please keep in mind that this is a Yahoo and AOL requirement, but we're including guidance below (provided by Yahoo and AOL) in order to generate your app password for Mailbird:

• Generate and manage third-party app passwords (Yahoo)
• Create and manage third-party app passwords (AOL)

Alternatively, please try following these steps below which we have prepared, in order to find out (and terminate) whichever one of your apps or services is currently using/blocking port 80:

• Open the Command Prompt by typing in Command Prompt into the Windows Search Bar.

• Now copy/paste the following text into the Command Prompt after you have opened it, making sure that you do not copy or add any spaces in the process: netstat -ano | find ":80"
• See if any entry which ends with 80 (e.g. 0.0.0.0:80) appear in the results - if you can see one, take note of the number in the last column from the results. This is the PID of the application which is using port 80.
• Now open the Task Manager for Windows by pressing CTRL + ALT + DELETE at the same time, and clicking on Task Manager.
• Navigate to the Processes tab, right-click on any column header and enable the PID column from the menu which appears, so that this is added as a column in the list of processes.

• Now, search for the entry with the PID number which you took note of earlier and see what it is associated with.
  • If the PID appears next to an application or service which is not a System application, simply terminate that application by right-clicking on it and choosing End Task. This is/was the task which was blocking access to port 80.
• If on the other hand the PID is associated with a System task, you will need to check which exact system task it is. In order to do this, we have provided detailed instructions below:
  • Head back to the Command Prompt and copy in the following command: telnet 127.0.0.1 80
    • You may need to add the telnet feature to Windows if this doesn't work - please click here to find out how to do this, and repeat this step once telnet is enabled on your device.
    • If you see a black screen, type in the word GET and hit enter.
  • If you see any results which contain Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0 inside, please type in the following command into the Command Prompt: net stop http
  • You will be presented with a list of services which are dependant on the HTTP Service.
• Now, head back to Windows and open your Control Panel and type in services into the search field in the top righthand corner of the window (as shown below).

• Now, click on View local services and review those services listed one by one and terminate each one of the services which was listed in the Command Prompt after you previously typed in net stop http.
  • To terminate a service, right-click on it and select Stop.
• Now go back to Mailbird, and check if that has fixed the issue. In theory, stopping those services should now allow you to authenticate successfully via port 80.

We hope that you have been able to authenticate your AOL or Yahoo email account with one of our suggested approaches, but if you still require assistance, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Happiness Team by clicking here.