Interrupt19

Photo courtesy of Mozilla
The lovely dream of Email Client nirvana.. Wouldn’t it be great to have all my email accounts in one place, making checking them a breeze. Especially the dozens of free web-based email accounts from Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, Freemail, AOL, and others that I’ve racked up over the years. How great would it be to be able to check those emails at the same time! Also, with the new (bloated) interfaces of these webmail accounts, I could avoid all the unnecessary news and other nonsense that comes bundled in with them.

Unfortunately, its time to wake up. These services don’t make it easy for you to use an Email Client. The reason these accounts are free is because of all the advertisements that you see all over the page when you log in. This doesn’t mean its impossible.

Fortunately, Thunderbird can be set up to access Yahoo!, Hotmail, GMail, Lycos, MailDotCom, Libero and AOL in seven easy steps.

Note: This trick could possibly violate the terms of service, resulting in your account being suspended or deleted. Use with caution - some services may be stricter than others.

Step 1: Download the required extensions

- Download the WebMail extension for Thunderbird.
- If you have trouble downloading, Ctrl-Click (Right click) on the link and choose Save Link As.
- Also download the extensions for each webmail service you want to access.
- In this tutorial, we’ll be using Yahoo! so download the Yahoo! extension.

Step 2: Installing the WebMail extension

- Open Thunderbird and on the Menu Bar, click Tools and choose Add Ons.
- The following screen will pop up:

- Click on the Install button and choose the file “web-mail-1-3-1.xpi”.
- It will be either in your Downloads folder or on the Desktop.
- (Note: File may named differently as new versions come out).
- When prompted, click the Install Now button.

Step 3: Installing the Yahoo! plugin

- You will be returned to the Add Ons screen:

- Again, click again on the Install button at the bottom and choose the “yahoo-1-3-2.xpi” file.
- When finished, click the Restart Thunderbird button.

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