As this is occurring on various machines and email accounts, I would guess that this is a Verizon Pop server issue. Maybe temporarilly down or experiencing heavy traffic.

many minutes on the phone with Verizon was of no help -- they said that there is nothing different or wrong on their end. The server is up when accessing it through the https://mail.verizon.com/webmail, and the emails will download to an iPhone, but three PCs running Win 7 64 bit on two separate accounts are all hanging as above. Everything is updated, nothing has changed in days, antimalware disabled, Tbird safe mode tried, nothing fixes this issue.

Must be something going on with the pop server.

see all these comments:

• http://forums.verizon.com/t5/Verizon-net-Email/Any-recent-changes-to-Verizon-POP-SMTP/m-p/698952/highlight/true#M16948

Just to make sure - what settings you are currently using?

In Thunderbird

• Help > Troubleshooting Information
• click on 'copy text to clipboard'
• paste info into this question
• remove/edit all info on fonts and printers.

Here's the troubleshooting info:

 Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 24.5.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0
   Profile Folder: Show Folder

             (Local drive)
   Application Build ID: 20140424091057
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Crash Reports: about:crashes
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext

   account4:
     INCOMING: account4, , (pop3) pop.verizon.net:995, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: smtp.verizon.net:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

 Extensions

 Important Modified Preferences

   Name: Value

     accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0
     browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
     browser.display.background_color: #CCCCCC
     dom.max_chrome_script_run_time: 0
     extensions.lastAppVersion: 24.5.0
     font.name.monospace.el: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.tr: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-baltic: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-central-euro: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-cyrillic: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-unicode: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-western: Times New Roman
     font.name.sans-serif.el: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.tr: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-baltic: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-central-euro: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-cyrillic: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-unicode: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-western: Times New Roman
     font.name.serif.el: Cambria
     font.name.serif.tr: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-baltic: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-central-euro: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-cyrillic: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-unicode: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-western: Cambria
     font.size.fixed.el: 14
     font.size.fixed.tr: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-baltic: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-central-euro: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-cyrillic: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-unicode: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-western: 18
     font.size.variable.el: 17
     font.size.variable.tr: 17
     font.size.variable.x-baltic: 17
     font.size.variable.x-central-euro: 17
     font.size.variable.x-cyrillic: 17
     font.size.variable.x-unicode: 17
     font.size.variable.x-western: 14
     mail.openMessageBehavior.version: 1
     mail.winsearch.enable: true
     mail.winsearch.firstRunDone: true
     mail.winsearch.global_reindex_time: 1319895177
     mailnews.database.global.datastore.id: af12a34a-0fa2-4cd9-b8b0-21d8d4590c7
     mailnews.database.global.indexer.enabled: false
     network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
     places.database.lastMaintenance: 1400428857
     places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104858
     places.history.expiration.transient_optimal_database_size: 167772160
     plugin.importedState: true
     print.printer_Fax.print_bgcolor: false
     print.printer_Fax.print_bgimages: false
     print.printer_Fax.print_evenpages: true
     print.printer_Fax.print_footercenter:
     print.printer_Fax.print_footerleft: &PT
     print.printer_Fax.print_footerright: &D
     print.printer_Fax.print_headercenter:
     print.printer_Fax.print_headerleft: &T
     print.printer_Fax.print_headerright: &U
     print.printer_Fax.print_in_color: true
     print.printer_Fax.print_margin_bottom: 0.5
     print.printer_Fax.print_margin_left: 0.5
     print.printer_Fax.print_margin_right: 0.5
     print.printer_Fax.print_margin_top: 0.5
     print.printer_Fax.print_oddpages: true
     print.printer_Fax.print_orientation: 0
     print.printer_Fax.print_reversed: false
     print.printer_Fax.print_scaling: 1.00
     print.printer_Fax.print_shrink_to_fit: true

 Graphics

     Adapter Description: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
     Vendor ID: 0x10de
     Device ID: 0x1244
     Adapter RAM: 2048
     Adapter Drivers: nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
     Driver Version: 9.18.13.3523
     Driver Date: 3-4-2014
     Direct2D Enabled: false
     DirectWrite Enabled: false (6.2.9200.16571)
     ClearType Parameters: ClearType parameters not found
     WebGL Renderer: false
     GPU Accelerated Windows: 0

     AzureCanvasBackend: skia
     AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
     AzureContentBackend: none

 JavaScript

 Incremental GC: 1

 Accessibility

   Activated: 0
   Prevent Accessibility: 0

 Library Versions

     Expected minimum version
     Version in use

     NSPR
     4.10.2
     4.10.2

     NSS
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS Util
     3.15.4
     3.15.4

     NSS SSL
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS S/MIME
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

All looks correct. No spelling errors. Ports are correct. SSL is selected for both incoming and outgoing.

Try increasing the number of minutes between each check for new mail.

Tools > Account Settings > Server settings for the mail account.

'check for new messages every eg: 15 minutes'

click on ok to save changes.

I notice that the verizon forum link shows 255 views just to that question today. there are also several versions of the same type of question.

• http://forums.verizon.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?include_forums=true&sort_by=-date&page=2&q=is_root%3Atrue&search_type=thread&filter=includeForums%2Clabels

So clearly, many people are experiencing the same problem. hopefuly they will get it sorted soon.

Thank you for your help. I hope they sort it out too.

Verizon is staffed by morons.

Access your router/modem if Verizon supplied it.

Mine has a FIREWALL and I needed to change the script to PASS port 995 and 465.

NONE of their tech support reps mentioned this. Neither did the MONTHLY email telling me to change to the new servers. IDIOTS...

There is no doubt about the veracity of your first sentence. Many wasted minutes this morning waiting to talk with someone at Verizon, who eventually told me that there was nothing wrong on their end, and that the only thing she could do was to walk through the settings with me (something I had done five times myself, had not changed in days, and had updated every time I was informed of the need to do the updates including changing the ports to 995 and 465.) After walking through the settings, which of course were not a problem, she wanted to know if there was anything else she could help me with. I refrained from asking her to refund those hours I've wasted dealing with this issue. Toad-Hall, in his answers above, pointed out that contrary to what she told me, there is a problem on the pop.verizon.net server.

This post from somebody else this morning on a Verizon forum:

Re: Any recent changes to Verizon POP/SMTP? Options

‎05-21-2014 08:33 AM

I'm on live chat now with someone and it's NOT the settings have changed. There's an outage and a ticket number

MAH5003654 is the ticket number. ___________________________________________________

As of 2:06 pm Eastern time, there is no fix for whatever ails that server.