I have been running Evolution 3.28.5 without a problem for a while, but this weekend it suddenly stopped showing the Inbox in all my IMAP e-mail accounts. I can still send e-mails but cannot receive them. The problem seems to be that Evolution no longer utilizes SSL.

Specifically, when I look at the RECEIVING EMAIL properties of my e-mail accounts, the assigned Port that used to say "993 IMAP over SSL" now says "993 IMAP over TLS" ("993 IMAP over SSL" is not even an option in the drop-down menu anymore); similarly, the assigned Encryption method that used to say "SSL on a dedicated port" nows says "TLS on a dedicated port" ("SSL on a dedicated port" is no longer an option in its drop-down menu). Please help me restore the SSL functionality on Evolution.

The properties for SENDING EMAIL did not change (i.e. the Port is still set to "587 (Message submission port)" and the Encryption Method is still "STARTTLS after connecting".

Frankly, I don't have a clue why the references to SSL suddenly disappeared, but I'm dead in the water until I get them restored.

Please help, and thank you in advance.

In general most things have moved away from SSL to TLS and in fact are requiring a minimum of TLS 1.1 or even TLS 1.2 (i.e. no TLS 1.0). Most browsers and mail applications are now only allowing TLS 1.1 or higher. Similarly most hosting is now requiring it and refusing anything lower so it may be your mail provider is requiring that.

I noticed in your other thread you say you saw an issue with IPv6 at Comcast. Did that NOT in fact solve the issue as you said there. If not you may wish to update that thread.

You may need to update both openssl and gnutls to get the latest TLS 1.1 and higher. (It may also be your OS doesn't have openssl/gnutls that support that - I found that as an issue in RHEL5/CentOS5 quite a while ago.)

This post discusses a similar problem which was solved by updating in Oct 2018. You may wish to try that.

When my mail service provider transitioned from SSL to TLS the name of the mailserver and access port changed, invalidating the settings for that account in Evolution. One day, just like you experienced, my inboxes just quit working.

Fortunately, the first thing I did was to log into the mailserver via the web interface and check my account status to make sure a payment hadn't been missed and to verify the account hadn't been hijacked. Happened to glance at the client settings cheat sheet and notice the they changed the name of mailserver and access port. Made those changes to Evolution's account settings (and noticed the protocol change) and normal mail service was restored.