Google quickly fixes Gmail POP3 issue affecting custom email clients

Recently, users who have their pop3 email accounts connected to Gmail started complaining of issues while retrieving emails. Specifically, affected users reported getting varying error notifications such as ‘POP3: Unable to fetch mail’ or ‘Temporary error (500)’.

In case you are not familiar, POP is a protocol that lets you download/read messages from services like Gmail and Yahoo Mail on custom email clients like Microsoft Outlook or those provided by companies like Hostgator and Bluehost. The issue in question was that custom email clients were not receiving incoming email messages from Gmail, with the retrieve process getting stuck on the ‘checking mail’ stage.

Some of the users said that the ‘Temporary Error (500)’ message was displayed when they tried to ‘edit info’ (under ‘Check mail from other accounts’ option) in the Settings menu.

Steps like delinking and relinking accounts, or adding a new account all together, had no effect, as the issue persisted.

The issue came to notice on August 9 and right away got addressed by an expert on the official Gmail forum, who said

“i have reported this to a Google Employee a few minutes ago”

He also suggested that

“if any of you are able to set up auto forwarding from your POP accounts at least you will get new emails sent over until its fixed”

.
Later on he added:

“I have had a reply from a Google Employee “Engineering found what could be the issue and a fix is on the way”

The same issue when pointed on twitter got addressed by team Gmail, informing that it has been fixed.

A quick look into the official Gmail forum reveals that many of the affected users are also reporting that the problem is now gone. Its clear that the service was troubled but got fixed right in time.

Source