Pine problem

[Mike Keithley]

I am using the binary-Slackware package of Pine 4.44 with the Slackware 8.1
distribution.  Because aol blocks my IP address when using sendmail
(another issue), I'm using attbi's smtp server as specified in .pinerc.

When sending messages, I get this warning message at least once:

[beginning of warning message]
There was a failure validating the SSL/TLS certificate for the server

                                 mail.attbi.com

The reason for the failure was

             self signed certificate in certificate chain (details)

We have not verified the identity of your server. If you ignore this
certificate validation problem and continue, you could end up connecting
to an imposter server.

If the certificate validation failure was expected and permanent you may
avoid seeing this warning message in the future by adding the option

                                /novalidate-cert

to the name of the folder you attempted to access.
[End of warning message]

The cursor is positioned on "details" and when I hit enter here I get this
message:

[beginning of message]
Host given by user:

  mail.attbi.com

Reason for failure:

  self signed certificate in certificate chain

Certificate being verified:

  /C=US/O=RSA Data Security, Inc./OU=Secure Server Certification Authority

[end of message]

I can type "y" and the message is sent successfully.  It seems this message
appears the first time I send a message in a pine session and does not
appear again until I quit Pine and start it up again.

What can I do about this?

I tried putting the /novalidate-cert switch in the .pinerc line with the
smtp server name but, of course, this didn't work.  I talked to nice
comcast customer-support people but they know only about Outlook but
suggest it is likely a security problem in Pine.  Would Pine need to be
using SSL?

Any help is appreciated.

TIA