Yahoo Powered Mail and Error 999

[kaptitsky]

I was getting Error 999 when accessing Yahoo by POP3 for a few mails at different domains.

999 is Yahoo's own "don't do that" error message.

I figured out what was wrong. Rather than using the POP3 address for the standard Yahoo mail, pop.mail.yahoo.com, wjen I used the specific POP3 server names for the domain error 999 went away.

The names I found were:

ATT.net: pop.att.yahoo.com

Ovi.com: ovi.pop.yahoo.com

========================

Well, that fixed those domains, but still getting the error on some Yahoo.com accounts.

Some people say it's throttling, that you have used too much bandwidth.

I doubt it, but it should heal eventually, I guess.

[xmailer]

I hadn't yet even noticed a problem with my att.net or ovi.com accounts. However, after reading your post, upon checking my account settings in a Gmail account from which I'm collecting via POP from one of each of those Yahoo domains, while thus far the att.net account still appears to be functioning okay, an error message appears for the ovi.com account:

"Authentication error. Mail from this account has not been retrieved since 12:21 am."

When clicking on the "view details" link, I'm also getting error 999:

Authentication error.
Server returned error "[AUTH] Incorrect username or password. (error 999)"

However, when I change the POP server to ovi.pop.yahoo.com and click on "save details", unfortunately that doesn't cure the problem for me:

"Server returned error: "We were unable to locate the other domain. Please contact your other provider."

That's using Port 995 w/SSL, which was working fine before. Is that the port you're using?

[xmailer]

In fact, I've now found that I'm unable to even reach http://mail.ovi.com , which is the page I last used to successfully login to my ovi.com account via the web. And when I attempt to login at http://mail.yahoo.com (using my full email address as my login ID:

"Invalid ID or password.
Please try again using your full Yahoo! ID, and type the text you see in the picture below."

I guess I'm just glad I never gave this address to anyone, despite being tempted to use it owing to my getting a good, short user name.

[xmailer]

After cancelling my edit of the ovi.com POP settings, leaving the original settings intact (POP server: pop.mail.yahoo.com), upon checking my account history again, perhaps some 7 or 8 hours or more after my last check, it appears that my last two approximately hourly pollings of the account were successful. Or at least no error messages were reported, although no new messages were collected, since thus far I've made very little use of the account.

I'm also able to login via the web, at least by logging into my ovi.com account on the site's main page, then clicking on the "mail" link.

Unfortunately, ovi.com still appears too inconsistent/unreliable for me to yet feel inclined to try to make any serious use of it. Which may be the case with Yahoo email in general, for all I know, since I haven't really used any of my Yahoo accounts often or regularly enough any time recently to know one way or another.

[xmailer]

And now this morning, after 4 consecutive apparently successful polls of my ovi.com account:

Authentication error.
Server returned error "[AUTH] Incorrect username or password."

Nope, it doesn't appear to be highly reliable.

Edit: Several hours later, my polling history for ovi.com shows three consecutive "non-problematic" pollings followed by two consecutibve (hourly) checks with:

Authentication error.
Server returned error "[AUTH] Incorrect username or password. (error 999)"

Yep, ovi.com POP appears to simply be unreliable. But although I can't say that I monitor it closely, thus far I haven't noticed any errors with the POP polling of att.net.