Mistype of password IMAP disconnects. [Linux.]

[peacocks]

I use Thunderbird to receive email from five different accounts with four providers. For security reasons I have not saved any passwords locally, so whenever I start up Thunderbird I have to type five passwords. Thunderbird works perfectly when I get all five correct.

Two of the accounts are with my home ISP. I noticed that if I mistype the password for either of these accounts I get the message "server <email-address> has disconnected. There may be a network problem..." (fleetingly, in a blue box at top right of Thunderbird window) whereas if I mistype the password for any of the other three, I am prompted to type it again. Whenever I mistype either of the two passwords for my home ISP I have to re-start Thunderbird (and re-type all five strong passwords - not a joke) to get a second attempt. If I mistype one but not the other of these two passwords I can get my emails for the other account but not that account, so there is clearly not a network or server problem.

Because it's my home ISP I was able to take this up with the technical support team, but they deny it's a problem on the server side and told me to uninstall and re-install Thunderbird. I did so (I run it on a Linux Ubuntu system: Linux <myname> 4.15.0-29-generic #31~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 18 08:54:04 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux). I also tried moving the directory ".thunderbird" to one side and restarting and reconfiguring Thunderbird. The problem persists, i.e. if I mistype the password I am permanently disconnected rather than being prompted to re-type.

Note - I have checked under "saved passwords" - there are no saved passwords, which is as I want it for security reasons; but if I click on "get mail" after mis-typing a password I get the "server has disconnected" message again (and no password prompt), so Thunderbird has stored my mis-typed password for this session (and has no means of letting me correct it).

Since it occurs only for the IMAP server of my ISP, not for the other three IMAP servers that I use, surely it is a server-side problem - ? If it's a Thunderbird problem, can it be fixed by playing with the preferences etc. or is it a bug?

Thanks!

[tanstaafl]

I'm not aware of any preferences that would effect that. It sounds like a problem with the ISPs mail server though its possible that Thunderbird doesn't react correctly to a unusual login error that the mail server returns. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_logging_for_mail/news if you want to go to the trouble of enabling POP3 logging and looking at a log file to find what error it really returned.

Many email providers provide a mechanism to automatically fetch mail from another providers POP server and merge it into your inbox. Have you thought about merging the two ISP accounts mail with whatever your main account is? There is a optional account column you can enable in the folder listing. There is also a account colors add-on at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... rs/?src=ss that "Associates user-defined colors with accounts and identities"

Take a look at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Protect_the_profiles_contents . It's not hard to create a password protected file container (a file that acts as if its a partition) using VeraCrypt and move your profile there. That will get you down to one password, without having to rely upon a master password. It will also protect your downloaded mail and address books. Having a password protected partition is also useful to store stuff like financial/tax information in case your PC won't boot and you decide to take it to a repair shop.