POP Protocol / Email Server Question

[Roger Diggle]

I'm curious whether there is some limit on the number of
messages that can be left in a POP server account, beyond which
the attempt to fetch new mail simply won't work.

I confess, I had quite a few more messages than I realized -
36,000 odd. (I thought I had limited it to 90 days - but hadn't
limited it at all.) Anyhow, fetching quit working on my Mac and
my Android phone on the same day. the mode of failure was:
Mail account “CONTRAWISE”, user ID “dig...@contrawise.net”:

>An error occurred while receiving mail from “pop.secureserver.net”.
>
>The POP server refused to process the “PASS” command; please verify
>that your password is correct and contact your mail server operator
>for assistance (Application error code 23216).
>
>The following information was returned as part of a transaction with
>the remote server; it may assist in diagnosing and resolving the
>cause of the error:
>
>-ERR unable to scan $HOME/Maildir

and the Android simply complained about Authentication Failure.

I spent 45 minutes with each of two tech support people who told
me something must be wrong with every possible setting. Nothing helped.

Tech support person #3, about 30 seconds after answering, said,
"Wholly cow - you've got way too many messages! Cut that back
to 25,000 messages and I guarantee the problem will go away!.
This is more messages than your email client can scan!"

Well, I could buy the first two statements - but the third one
sounded way fishy. Even if true, I can't believe the nature of
the error would be an Authentication problem. I'm guessing they
set a number of messages beyond which the Authentication error
is *triggered.*

Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks in advance ...
Roger

[Rich Siegel]

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, Roger Diggle <dig...@contrawise.net> wrote:

> I'm curious whether there is some limit on the number of messages that
> can be left in a POP server account, beyond which the attempt to fetch
> new mail simply won't work.

No; it's completely server- and implementation-dependent.

R.
--
Rich Siegel Bare Bones Software, Inc.
<sie...@barebones.com> <http://www.barebones.com/>

Someday I'll look back on all this and laugh... until they sedate me.

[Roger Diggle]

On 3/13/13 at 10:29 PM, sie...@mailsmith.org (Rich Siegel) wrote:

> On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, Roger Diggle <dig...@contrawise.net> wrote:
>
> > I'm curious whether there is some limit on the number of messages that
> > can be left in a POP server account, beyond which the attempt to fetch
> > new mail simply won't work.
>
> No; it's completely server- and implementation-dependent.

That's what I expected to hear.
Good to have it confirmed by someone with gobs of experience.
Thanks, Rich!

Roger