[Users] Why ask for the password twice?

[Abhay S. Kushwaha]

Hi Bruce.

Claws-Mail, by design, does not try to be overly intelligent. In this
case it's a good thing.

The reason you've been asked to put in your password is because
Claws-Mail was asked for it by Google. However, it wasn't expecting
to be asked so.

That is because when you set up the account, you did not specify that
there would be authentication involved and it's supposed to use the
username/password used to retrieve mail.

In a sense, it could attempt to use your POP/IMAP account
user/password when prompted, but in some fringe cases, it could
result in lack of privacy and could be a security concern. I can also
think of further fringe cases where it could be undesirable that such
an attempt even be made -- if somebody has decided not to put in the
credentials for outgoing server, I would imagine they have a good
reason for doing so rather than assuming they made a mistake or
overlooked an option.

So I'm guessing it behaves thus more because of the philosophy of the
developers rather than overt design decision. It's definitely not an
oversight though.

Abhay

On Mon, 6 Jan 2014 17:50:48 +0000 (UTC), Bruce wrote:

> I'm mostly curious if it was 'by design' or an oversight or
> something else...
> 
> First, my environment.  I'm running version 3.9.3-31-gc98d95 on
> windows 7 pro.  I use IMAP4 for my gmail account with the receiving
> server set to imap.gmail.com and the sending server set to
> smtp.gmail.com.  I've moved over to claws recently (a couple of
> months ago) from sylpheed.
> 
> When I start up claws, it asks for my password.  I fully understand
> that. The first time I send mail, it asks for my password again,
> which given that I'm using gmail, is the same as the password I
> entered when I started claws.
> 
> Is there a reason (I'm sure there is, and it's probably obvious)
> why claws doesn't first try the password it already knows, and if
> that fails, ask for the other password?
> 
> Thanks!
> Bruce