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Is IMAP/POP3 Gmail or Gtalk periodically rejecting your password?

Posted on October 6, 2008 by snipe in Featured, Tips & Tricks

I have run into this many times: my Gtalk password is stored in my email program (Thunderbird as an IMAP account) and my Gtalk password is stored in Adium, and every now and then, when I start my computer, Google tells me my password is wrong.

I can’t login to Gtalk, I can’t check my email. Accessing Gmail via the web interface works fine, so I know Google isn’t down, but every time I check mail in Thunderbird, I get a password error. I faithfully retype my password, only to have it reject it anyway.

Using Adium, I can logon to AIM, Yahoo, even LJ Chat (tho I don’t know why I ever would), but every moment or two, I get a password prompt. If I pull up the Accounts screen and try to manually connect, it gets to “Authenticating: 75%” and then hits me with another password box.

While I have no idea why this works, it does:

  1. Quit/close your email client (Thunderbird, in my case)
  2. Quit/close your chat program (Adium in my case)
  3. Go to https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha
  4. Complete the captcha prompt there and submit the form
  5. Restart your email and chat clients – all should be well.

It would seem some of sort of authentication bug with Google. The captcha gets all of the services back on the same page.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 7:52 am and is filed under Featured, Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • thanks bro, is done
  • D A
    it didn't work

    sigh

    i'm so disappointed - i miss my gmail ...

    any other suggestions?
  • MP
    If your addresses are hosted on google apps, go to https://www.google.com/a/[your domain].com/UnlockCaptcha

    Ref. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an...
  • Todd - I don't think this is a POP3 issue - I think it only affects IMAP users.
  • Todd W
    I use pop.gmail.com in thunderbird and gtalk in pidgin and I haven't been prompted for my password and this has never happened to me.
  • Thank you! I had the exact same problem.
  • Thanks for the info! My email is set to check every 15 minutes or so, but that's a good place to start!
  • Joe
    Your IM clients may be logging in too often. See this Gmail help page:

    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an...
  • Yah, its really aggravating, and I wish I had a long-term fix for it. Sometimes it will happen several times a day, and other times not for a week. Puzzling, but I haven't found any solution or explanation from Google. Let me know if you guys do :)
  • Huh.. I thought I might be the only one. I get this happening to me in Outlook all the time. Thanks, I'll try it.
  • Pyry Haulos
    I have similar experiences. I've set up fetchmail to fetch emails from my gmail accounts to private mail server and about one- or two times per week I get notify from fetchmail daemon that my password is rejected. But I don't need to "unlock" that account, after some minutes gmail happily accepts that pw. This seems to happen more often on other account which I don't use that much.

    Strange, but obviously I'm not alone.
  • respondiéndome con google http://tinyurl.com/3rkm6b
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