G Suite SMTP doesn’t work for one user
Quick rundown of what we had happen today, learn from my fail. Attempting to set up an HP scan to email we ran into a single username and password in our G Suite/Google Apps org being rejected.
TL;DR – SMTP is evidently considered a less secure app. Less secure apps get disabled automatically now if not used for a while. You already knew this.
I tested my account, it worked fine. Knowing the usernames and passwords of many other people in our organization, I tested another and it also worked fine, it was just the one account we wanted to use (front desk account.)
Everything with that account was set up the same way as every other account, and other than the name being Front Q. Desk, there was no difference between it and any others that I knew of.
15 minutes with Google support, had my first head-desk support experience with them (usually it’s great.) and managed to discover while waiting that Google’s turning less secure apps off by default if not used now.
SMTP with SSL/TLS is evidently considered a less secure app now. The user has to go to https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps?pli=1 in order to enable it.
During this time I ended up downloading an SMTP testing tool from Socketlabs that let me see the error message, which was simply a that the username/password were rejected. Basically what the HP printer was claiming.
I didn’t quite trust online SMTP verification sites, which there are many. I guess I shouldn’t have trusted an app either, but it’s what I used.
Here’s a picture of Google support’s SMTP settings in case you’re hunched over a console trying to manage 57 windows:
Good night, SMTP. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.
