Okay, this is weird.
I can access pretty much any website great. However, I’m unable, or have problems, connecting to pretty much every e-mail service. I can’t log into Hotmail, Yahoo, or Mail.com. Gmail sort of works, sometimes, but it usually hangs when trying to send a message, and then the message never actually gets sent.
Any idea what might be causing this? I have broadband by the way.
I should clarify, by "anywhere’ I meant “any e-mail based website”
What browser are you using?
*I doubt I’ll actually be able to solve your problem, but this seems like possibly relevant information.
Check here that you’re able to connect to an SSL encrypted site.
IE mostly, but I had the same problem in Firefox and Netscape as well.
This is a home account and not a company account, right? (I know you said you have broadband, but I’m just confirming). If you were doing it from work, I’d suggest you might be bouncing off a corporate firewall.
Check your firewall. Makes sure you allow (e.g.) port 443 (HTTPS or secure cockets HTTP) etc. There was a time when some firewalls blocked it by default because trojans, etc used secure socket to communicate with their controllers. Now, of course, they simply encrypt over any port they choose. Sometimes certain sites (e.g. parts of the MSN Passport system) may end up on your block lists as well (by accident or misinterpretation of their referral site relay behavior)
You might also check if your browsers’ security settings allows a page on one site to access or show images from other sites. Such cross-site pages are generally bad in many ways, for “ordinary” web pages to do but some of the bigger webmail sites use or require that as part of their verification/advertising schemes. Hotmail once did.
Unfortunately I’m out of date on this stuff and I don’t know what tricks Hotmail, Yahoo, etc use today. Have you tried Gmail as a test of the basics of secure webmail login/viewing? (not necessarily as an alternative – I realize you may need your existing accounts)
Hey, the local Luddite checking in–this may or may not apply. Perhaps you have a bunch of music or video files? Or are trying to download at the same time? That would make my system slow down so much, it’ll sign me out of gmail. I purged a whole bunch of stuff and presto, magnifico!