AOL Mail sync with Windows 10

I've had an e-mail from AOL saying that from 20 October they are no longer supporting third party access such as Windows 10 as they may not be secure and to sign in directly via the web or their app.

I'm disappointed with this action as it means I don't have access on the Windows platform which I find is great and simple to use, so is there any way I can still continue to access my e-mails using Windows 10 after October or will they now be blocked.

Hope you can persuade AOL to change their minds. 

Regards

Bryan Monkman

What AOL is requiring is that you generate a password within their website which will become a controlling password linking your application to AOL online email. Once that is done you should be able to access it in Windows 10. One caveat is that you probably should maintain your current password as the password that allows you to actually log into AOL should you want to access mail online. The AOL generated password is sort of a bridge between both programs. It's nonsense. Hence, you will in effect have 2 passwords. Incidentally, the AOL generated password is a 16 character lower case alpha password.

I use outlook from Office 2019. I called AOL and it takes forever as I have Verizon legacy emails that they are responsible for. The process is simple. Log into AOL, highlight options (upper right corner), Account Info and select account security on left side. At bottom is password generator. Select Outlook (desktop, mobile, etc.) and you will then generate a 16 alpha character lower case password. That then becomes your password within Outlook. Maintain your original outlook password if you want to log in to AOL via the internet. In essence, it ensures what AOL claims to be a password that will defy brute force attacks. It's probably BS. Here's why:

A typical 8 character password with upper and lower case alphas, numbers, and special characters is probably just as good. The upper and lower case alphas provide 52 possibilities for each character compared to 26 for lower case. But, some people might use mainly numbers which only have 10. So, I give them a pass. However, AOL is a fledgling BS website going private and they probably really just want more traffic so they ramped up the need to go through all of this ****. All they had to do was send everyone an email explaining what I just did in few sentences. I filed a complaint with the FCC because I wasted so much time, got disconnected frequently and was given a variety of reasons and a need to get escalated support only to be put on hold without anyone telling me so. I ended up having a great conversation with myself.

This just started happening to me today... I searched on AOL and found this and it resolved the issue... I use AOL via Outlook:

Create and manage third-party app passwords - AOL Help

Hope it helps. Thanks.