Updated: November 27, 2023 (April 7, 2020)

Exchange Online Cuts Off Some Clients in Oct. 2020

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

Exchange Online will cut off basic authentication in the second half of 2021 for many protocols.
Basic authentication is disabled for new tenants and will be disabled in October 2020 for tenants with no recorded usage.
The cutoff will prevent access by some mail clients.
Migrations from third-party mail systems, administrative scripts, and mobile clients are most likely to be affected.
Exchange Server and recent versions of Outlook and are not affected.
Microsoft has promised updates that could limit the impact.

Exchange Online will cut off basic authentication in the second half of 2021 for the following protocols:

Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), widely used by mobile clients
Post Office Protocol (POP), an Internet standard still used by some mail clients
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), an alternative to POP used by some clients and also for some migrations to Exchange Online
Remote PowerShell (RPS), used by scripts to administer Exchange Online
Exchange Web Services,

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