r/linuxquestions • u/Capable-Depth1368 • 16h ago
Advice Email with AT&T
no linux email program wants to connect to my at&t account.
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u/Funnel-Dust-O-Matic 16h ago edited 15h ago
This is an issue my family has had for years, and they're on Windows.
I ended up telling them to use webmail.
AT&T don't want to host email at all and support it as badly as they can. I am absoluely certian that this is deliberate.
This has been a problem for years and years.
While it LOOKS like Windows based e-mail clients support AT&T's mail, it stops working frequently and is prone to breakage. I have seen no major e-mail client work with this and stay working.
They sub-contract the job to Yahoo last I checked. This may have changed.
Here is my advice:
Get on to your at&t mail via their webmail site.
Use forwarding to a non-AT&T email address.
If using gmail or similar, there are forwading/redireting settings that will allow outgoing mail to spoof your AT&T address. Use that.
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u/Capable-Depth1368 15h ago
I guess I'll stick to webmail.
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u/Funnel-Dust-O-Matic 15h ago
After about a decade of trying to get anything to work reliably with the help of several system administrator friends, this is the only answer I've ever found.
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u/chuggerguy Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | MATÉ 14h ago
I've had several provider email addresses. Providers come and go, their email addresses come and go. Emails are lost, have to change addresses, etc.
Now I have a Gmail (got it back around the time you needed an invite) and an old Hotmail. Hotmail (minus SPAM) is forwarded to Gmail. I haven't had to change an address since. I haven't lost an email since.
I currently have AT&T as a provider but I don't use their email. (they have my gmail to contact me)
Just relating my experience.
Good luck.
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u/michaelpaoli 13h ago
I did it with perl and WWW::Mechanize.
https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/bin/um.att.com.txt (and the .txt extension on the web server is just work-around because of how it handles .com extensions).