According to a report on MacNN, Yahoo! has withdrawn POP3 access for external mail clients like Mail.app. Yahoo! webmail users will now only be able to use the service’s webmail interface.

The news item points to a Yahoo! Mail support statement that reads:

As a web-based email service, Yahoo! Mail does not currently offer access to POP or SMTP servers. This means that you will not be able to use an external email client such as Netscape Mail, Eudora, or Outlook to access your Yahoo! Mail account.

This seems to be a odds with other information (still?) on the Yahoo! Mail support site about POP3 access for Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts, and with my recollection that POP access has always been denied to users with free accounts.

Can anyone shed any more light on this?

UPDATE: Hmmm…. This may be a false alarm. Light shed in the comments suggests that no major change to existing restrictions has occurred. [Thanks, Ivan et al.]mail.app, apple mail, yahoo, webmail, POP, external access

Apple Mail users can easily get their webmail, read and send it using httpmail (freeware), MacFreePOPs (freeware) or Mail Forward (shareware), three apps that fool webmail services into allowing access for Mail.app.

With the WebMail extension, Thunderbird users can play too.

It offers support for Hotmail, Yahoo!, Lycos, Mail.com and more, although you can now read your AOL mail over IMAP and get POP access to Gmail directly.

Installation is a two-part process, involving the master WebMail extension and further service-specific extensions:

You might need to adjust your port settings and fiddle around a bit to avoid the infamous “negative vibes” error.

WebMail is freeware and available from the extension’s web site .

NB: I only tested this with Hotmail, where it works fine.thunderbird, extensions, webmail, hotmail, yahoo, gmail, email, not apple mail

With the SwiftMail Dashboard widget, you can quickly dash off an email using your Gmail, .Mac, Yahoo or AOL email account.

It offers a quick username and password setup or the option of entering detailed server information.

The widget saves the last five subject lines and the recipients in drop-down boxes to the right of the fields:

Call me a pre-Tiger throw-back if you like, but I don’t see the point of these email widgets.

It’s no faster than switching to Mail.app or using Quicksilver to dash off the note.

Perhaps it is faster than switching to Entourage or Thunderbird or the web-based interface of those services.

You can get the freeware widget from the developer’s web site .

UPDATE: Once briefly QuickMail before becoming SwiftMail (briefly), the widget is now called “DashMail” (for the moment).

[Via TUAW ]widget, dashboard, email, gmail, aol, yahoo, dotmac, productivity

Some Yahoo! users were left without instant messaging or email access on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, CNet reports :

“For a brief period early this morning, certain areas of Yahoo were inaccessible to a portion of registered users due to software-related issues,” Yahoo spokeswoman Kiersten Hollars said in a statement. “We have identified the issue and corrected it. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience, and we apologize to our users who might have been affected.

A .Mac user at Showngo found the outage extremely helpful therapy.yahoo, .mac, dotmac, outage

Mail Forward is a “webmail translator” that allows you to use Mail.app to read your AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, and Yahoo webmail. It can also forward email from standard POP accounts.

It works by accessing your web mail or POP mailbox and forwarding each piece of mail through your SMTP mail server. You can manage up to 20 different accounts this way.

Mail checks can be scheduled and AppleScript support offers further options for tweaking the forwarding.

A new beta released today contains modifications to work with Hotmail service changes. It will also display a warning message if an SMTP server name that is known to be unsuitable for forwarding mail is entered in the Preferences dialog.

SMTP servers that send a multiline connection greeting are now supported.

MacFreePOPs does the same thing. It is free but harder to set up.

Mail Forward comes as a demo that will work for 30 days, after which registration will cost USD 19.95. You can get it from the developer’s web site .webmail, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, mail.app, apple mail, plugins

Mail Forward is an app that will forward your email from AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo! or from any POP account to Apple Mail, where you can read in greater style and comfort (see an earlier Hawk Wings post for screenshots and so forth).

An updated version released today changes the Yahoo! server login sequence for improved reliability and offers preliminary support for Hotmail/MSN Windows Live Mail beta accounts.

Mail Forward is shareware (USD 19.95) and is available from the developer’s web site .AOL, gmail, hotmail, MSN, yahoo, POP, mail.app, apple mail, Windows Live Mail, plugin

MacFreePOPs is a stand-alone app which allows you to use Mail.app with web-based mail services like Yahoo, hotmail, Gmail, AOL and SquirrelMail.

An updated version (1.6) has been released. It includes a more recent version of FreePOPs (0.0.97), an English localisation, a better log window, detailed plug-in information and an improved on-line update system.

MailForward is another utility that does the same job. It is easier to use, but it costs money.

MacFreePOPs is donation-ware and is available from the project’s web site .macfreepops, yahoo!, gmail, AOL, hotmail, squirrelmail, plugin, mail.app, apple mail