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Thunderbird saved a false password but can still access Emails received

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  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

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Hi there,

I didn't remember the password for one of the Gmail accounts set up in my thunerbird profile. I can still receive and send Emails on it, but strangely, the two passwords that are saved in the profile, are both the same random string of 16 characters which was supposedly set up in december 2015. I know I didn't do that and I can't manually log into the account with this password. However, I can still receive and send Emails via Thunderbird with this account.

Does anyone have an explanation for this?

Hi there, I didn't remember the password for one of the Gmail accounts set up in my thunerbird profile. I can still receive and send Emails on it, but strangely, the two passwords that are saved in the profile, are both the same random string of 16 characters which was supposedly set up in december 2015. I know I didn't do that and I can't manually log into the account with this password. However, I can still receive and send Emails via Thunderbird with this account. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

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if you set up gmail to use Authentication Method: OAuth2, then it was created when you allowed gmail. if the line in saved passwords starts with: oauth://accounts.google.com...... You would have entered your webmail password, then gmail would ask you to confirm that it is you and to allow and that random number would been produced. No you cannot use it because it is not your password.

I've never used a two step authentication, but would imagine a similar situation would occur as you would need an application specific password to allow Thunderbird to access account.