Mike Easter

The concept for a news message sent in error is to (be able to) cancel
the message, which function is found in the Message menu (not right click).

BUT...

... the concept of cancelling a message opens another can of worms.

The idea would be that -1- you send a message in error -2- that message
reaches the news server and propagates to other news servers all over
the world -3- you then wish to 'unsend' the sent message, so -4- you
send out a cancel message, which theoretically would first go to the
news server you sent to in the first place, and then -5- that news
server would propagate your cancel message to all of the other news
servers all over the world which would then -6- honor your cancel and
cancel your original message.

The can of worms is that in its simplicity, the cancel message function
lends itself to 'rogue' (or bogus) cancel messages which are initiated
by someone other than the original message sender.

Consequent to mitigating the problem of rogue cancels, typical news
agent developers have chosen to eliminate the ability to cancel a
message (send a cancel message message) from the agent.  And further,
typical news server admins have chosen to eliminate the 'vanilla' cancel
message function of the news server.  That is some admins
eliminate/decline/refuse to cancel a message, but they will propagate a
cancel message to let other admins do with it whatever; or some other
admins will not cancel and not propagate the cancel.

BUT...

... along comes the concept of cancel lock and cancel key, which enables
a security process which prevents anyone but the sender of the message
from cancelling a message.  This allows certain servers with such a
process in place to be able to honor cancels and also to propagate cancels.

This is the case for such as news.individual.net and eternal-september
which honor and propagate cancel messages which were initiated by their
clients and the clients of the other servers with cancel-lock-key.

So;  you actually /can/ cancel a message, in a limited sense.

--
Mike Easter

I believe I would troubleshoot this problem by getting the messages for
one mail account at a time.

That causes me to suspect that there is an incompatibility in the server
settings for the account, such as security settings

That message is 'generic' and generally/frequently/often has nothing to
do with the password.  That is, a transaction problem related to
settings will result in a password fault/error being thrown up when the
problem had nothing to do with the pass.

I don't.  But it has been reported being seen under other conditions
than mail servers, such as some news servers which require authentication.

If you will name either the specific mail server which has caused the
problem in the past or all of your mail servers, we can ascertain how
their settings should be configured.

This is not a password problem per se, so your subject 'Forgetting
passwords' is not actually the problem, but a 'manifestation' of an
underlying non-password settings problem.

--
Mike Easter

Read more »

I believe that is a godaddy server and searching (such as godaddy
forums) shows me that it is not unusual for that server to not respond
'comprehensively' -- perhaps because sometimes it is too busy.

consistently it engages if the connection is not secure, unless you
don't feel comfortable with that.

This help page for the server and Tb is advising the pop server
connection to not use secure.

http://products.secureserver.net/email/email_thunderbird.htm   Setting Up
Your POP or IMAP Email Address with Mozilla Thunderbird

This graphic http://products.secureserver.net/email/screens/thunderbird8.gif   shows
the account being setup with port 110 and uncheck secure connection
uncheck secure authentication which would result in Connection security
none and Authentication method normal password.

--
Mike Easter