Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about email providers making customers use special passwords for third-party apps. To many people, this is verbiage they simply don’t understand. I’m going to try to clear that up for you.

Let’s say you have a Comcast email address. If you open a browser and navigate to my.xfinity.com to view your email – i.e., webmail, you are not using third-party software. On the other hand, if you have added your Comcast email address to Microsoft Outlook – an email client – then you are using a third-party app. Outlook is not a Comcast product; thus, Outlook falls into the third-party category.

Many email providers are now putting restrictions and/or labels on third-party email apps. Google (Gmail), for instance, considers Outlook a “less secure app” and won’t allow you to use it unless you change a setting in Google. (IMHO, this is ridiculous. Outlook is the quintessential email client used by tens of thousands of companies [including 4KCC] and individuals. To call it an insecure app reeks of company rivalry.) There are other email client apps, of course, and some of them probably do fall under the category of “less secure.”

Besides Google making you change a setting, Yahoo and AT&T are now making you use a special password just for email client apps that don’t come from them – third-party apps. For most people, this change is frustrating and annoying but it is what it is.

If you use an email client app and suddenly can’t send or receive email, you are probably being affected by this change. Should this happen to you and you don’t know what to do, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help you sort it out.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comment area below.