Random Mail Clients Showing Up for Set Up

[mac.fanatic]

I was going through the system preferences on my mac and when clicked on Mail, Contacts, & Calendars, I saw that some foreign language mail clients showed up that I could set up. They look either Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Vietnamese.

Here are the clients:

mail.163.com
www.126.com
mail.qq.com
weibo.com
youku
tudou.com

Before, the only options I had as mail clients were:

iCloud
Microsoft Exchange
Gmail
Yahoo!
AOL
Twitter
Vimeo
Flikr

Where did those extra mail clients come from? Is this a virus?

 

[Nermal]

I believe that those are new in 10.8.

 

[mac.fanatic]

I believe that those are new in 10.8.

I have been running 10.8 since day one and today is the first day I saw it. I closed system references and went back again and all those mail clients disappeared. What is this?

 

[Nermal]

Were you in the same physical location at the time? I've had an issue in the past where my computer has seen a Wi-Fi point which was configured for Beijing, and OS X dutifully changed my clock to match!

I had something similar on an Android phone where I got too close to a Japanese access point and the street names in Navigation all changed to katakana

 

[mac.fanatic]

Were you in the same physical location at the time? I've had an issue in the past where my computer has seen an Wi-Fi point which was configured for Beijing, and OS X dutifully changed my clock to match!

I had something similar on an Android phone where I got too close to a Japanese access point and the street names in Navigation all changed to katakana

Yeah I was sitting at the same spot when I posted the thread. What could cause this?

 

[Nermal]

Yeah I was sitting at the same spot when I posted the thread. What could cause this?

Sorry, in that case I don't know.

 

[mac.fanatic]

Sorry, in that case I don't know.

Should I be concerned about this? Could it be a virus or spamware of some sort?

 

[Nermal]

Should I be concerned about this? Could it be a virus or spamware of some sort?

I wouldn't worry too much; they're still part of OS X and it just looks like the location detection messed up. It's more likely to be a bug than any sort of malware.

 

[HenryAZ]

163.com and 126.com are two major Chinese email domains.

 

[mac.fanatic]

163.com and 126.com are two major Chinese email domains.

Why would those domains show up on my machine then go away after a few minutes? That's what I'm curious about.

 

[HenryAZ]

Why would those domains show up on my machine then go away after a few minutes? That's what I'm curious about.

I'm not sure why they are going away. I don't have ML, so I don't see them at all. I know they are legitimate email domains whose admins are participating in the emerging DMARC specification for authenticating email senders (an anti-spam effort). Apple announced support for QQ Mail, 126 and 163 email clients as part of their "Features for China" in Mountain Lion, as Nermal already pointed out.