MacBook Air unable to setup BT mail in Mail App

[Taffwilf]

Hope some one can help. I can't set up BT mail using the Mail client on my MacBook Air. When I enter my details it says "unable  to verify account name or password"    .I use the same details on my IPhone and have no issue using the mail app. Any ideas, I have tried a few things but no joy.

[licquorice]

As the problem is specific to your MacBook Air, you will probably get better advice on an Apple forum.

[gg30340]

Are you Are you presently a BT Broadband customer or are you paying for your email through a BT Premium email account or did you migrate to EE Broadband?

If none of the above your email account may have been downgraded to a BTMail Basic account which can not be used with an email client or email apps.

See link

https://www.bt.com/help/email/bt-email-products

If this does apply you will find that your BTMail that you use with an app on other devices will also stop when BT catch up.

[Taffwilf]

I am A BT broadband customer. 

[Leanne_T]

Hi @Taffwilf 

Thanks for coming to the community. 

If you get in touch with our email support team they can check everything at our end for you. 

It would be worth contacting Apple as @licquorice has advised to see if they can offer any advice for you to try on the MacBook. 

Leanne.

[KN99]

I had exactly this problem with Apple Mail — “Unable to verify account name or password” when adding my BT email account on my Mac, despite the same credentials working elsewhere.

After a lot of testing, the problem turned out NOT to be the Mac, Apple Mail, Keychain or the BT password. It was related to my broadband public IP address.

I proved this by connecting the same Mac to my iPhone Personal Hotspot. The BT account then authenticated successfully. Switching back to my home broadband caused it to fail again.

My broadband is with Sky. I left the Sky router switched off overnight, which resulted in a different public IPv4 address being allocated the following morning.

Without changing ANY BT Mail settings, password or anything on the Mac, I then tried adding the BT account again over my normal home broadband — and it worked. One small wrinkle - at first it said it couldn't verify and the server boxes were empty. I just deleted and re-applied the "m" of ".com" on my email address and tried again - straight in.

So if you have this exact problem, try connecting the Mac temporarily through a mobile hotspot. If BT Mail then works, check whether your ISP can allocate you a different public IP address. In my case, leaving the Sky router switched off overnight was enough to obtain a new one. Note: I had tried 30 mins, but the IP didn't change

Full Investigation Steps:

1. BT username/password confirmed good. Webmail worked, and we then authenticated directly against BT's IMAP server from Terminal, bypassing Apple Mail:

   curl --url "imaps://mail.btinternet.com/" --user "[email protected]"

   That succeeded.

2. Both BT mail ports were reachable from the Mac:

   nc -vz mail.btinternet.com 993
   nc -vz mail.btinternet.com 465

   Both succeeded, ruling out a simple firewall/blocked-port problem.

3. We then connected directly to BT's SMTP server using OpenSSL:

   openssl s_client -connect mail.btinternet.com:465 -crlf

   The BT server initially accepted the connection, but after the SMTP dialogue it returned the crucial error:

   550 IP Address rejected for policy reasons

   That was the first strong indication that the failure wasn't actually the BT password at all — BT's SMTP system was objecting to the connection based on the originating IP/policy.

4. There was an interesting complication: repeating the OpenSSL test connected us to different BT SMTP backend servers. Some gave a normal EHLO response and advertised:

   250-AUTH=LOGIN
   250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN

   So the behaviour wasn't completely consistent across BT's backend servers.

5. We then attempted an actual SMTP login independently of Apple Mail, using Python against mail.btinternet.comon port 465. Over the normal Sky broadband connection, the server dropped the connection during authentication:

   SMTPServerDisconnected: Connection unexpectedly closed

   We also tried SMTP on port 587 and saw the same sort of authentication failure.

6. Then came the decisive test. We connected the same Mac to the iPhone Personal Hotspot, changing nothing else — same Mac, same BT account, same password, same SMTP server and same port 465.

   SMTP authentication immediately returned:

   235 PLAIN authentication successful

7. Switching back to the Sky broadband connection caused the problem again. That isolated the variable to the network/public IP, rather than Apple Mail, the Mac or the BT credentials.

8. Finally, we left the Sky router switched off overnight. Sky allocated a different public IPv4 address the next morning. We changed nothing whatsoever in the BT account configuration and tried Apple Mail again over the normal home network.

   The BT account authenticated and added successfully.

So the particularly useful diagnostic sequence for anyone else with this problem is:

Apple Mail fails → direct IMAP authentication succeeds → BT SMTP produces 550 IP Address rejected for policy reasons/drops SMTP authentication → same SMTP authentication succeeds over a mobile hotspot → obtain a new home public IP → Apple Mail works.

[KN99]

@Leanne_T  see my solution - this is the actual issue & fix.

Cheers

Keith

[Peter_W]

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience here, @KN99 

BT Connections are very similar to Sky in the sense that you're assigned a dynamic IP, and like you shared above, if a customer leaves their Hub powered off for around 30 minutes, they should be assigned a new one. 

If a customer faced repeat issues though, we'd still recommend getting in touch just so we can double check if the IP has been flagged any way by our systems.

Peter

[KN99]

Thanks @Peter_W 

UPDATE – further testing

Unfortunately I celebrated too early! Changing my Sky public IP address initially fixed the problem, but later the same symptoms returned.

I've now done some more controlled testing which I think narrows the problem down considerably.

Using Python from Terminal on the Mac, I attempted to authenticate directly with BT's SMTP server (mail.btinternet.com, port 465), completely bypassing Apple Mail.

When connected through my normal Sky broadband, the connection reaches BT's SMTP server but is closed when authentication takes place:

smtplib.SMTPServerDisconnected: Connection unexpectedly closed

I then connected the same Mac to my iPhone Personal Hotspot, using mobile data, and ran exactly the same test with the same BT username/password and server settings.

It immediately succeeded:

Login: (235, b'PLAIN authentication successful')

Switching back to the Sky broadband connection and repeating the same test causes the SMTP authentication to fail again.

This has now happened using two different Sky public IPv4 addresses, so my original theory that one particular Sky IP address was being rejected appears to have been wrong.

Earlier in the troubleshooting I also received this response directly from one of BT's SMTP servers:

550 IP Address rejected for policy reasons

So the consistent result is:

Sky broadband → BT SMTP authentication: FAIL

iPhone mobile data → BT SMTP authentication: SUCCESS

This is using the same Mac, same BT account/password, same SMTP server and same port. Apple Mail isn't involved in these tests.

It therefore looks increasingly likely that this is some sort of BT SMTP policy/security issue affecting connections coming via Sky broadband, rather than an Apple Mail configuration or password problem.

For anyone experiencing the same problem, a useful diagnostic is to connect your Mac temporarily to a mobile hotspot. If BT Mail/SMTP authentication immediately works on mobile data but fails again on your home broadband, you may be experiencing the same issue.

Who do I contact in BT?

[Rach_H]

Hi @KN99,

If you reach out to our team then they'll be happy to take a look into this for you.

Rach