GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 462982
Multiple gmail POP address, passwords swapped
Last modified: 2011-07-27 17:24:10 UTC
Please describe the problem: This is a very strange bug that has only occurred once but that has definitely occurred. I have five gmail address configured to be accessed by evolution through POP. Today when checking my email with evolution, while the send/receive dialog was present, I lost my connection to the internet (due to our kitten and a loose ethernet cable). I closed evolution. Later, when the internet was back up, I restarted evolution and a strange thing happened: Three of my five gmail accounts were asking that I enter the password (it is normally saved by evolution). None of the passwords worked. After a lot of headache and desperation, I accidentally discovered that the three passwords had actually been swapped! This was not just in evolution but also if I logged in through the gmail webmail interface. They were veritable swapped with one another and there is absolutely no possibility that I changed them all around or that I could have mixed up the passwords myself. The password status of my 5 accounts went something like this: Before: Account 1 -> Pass A, Account 2 -> Pass B, Account 3 -> Pass C, Account 4 -> Pass C, Account 5 -> Pass C After: Account 1 -> Pass C, Account 2 -> Pass A, Account 3 -> Pass B, Account 4 -> Pass C, Account 5 -> Pass C The 4th and 5th account were not changed, this may have been because they were finished checking the gmail pop server before we lost the internet connection or that they did get swapped but just ended up with the correct password because I have the same password for a few accounts. My first guess would be that it is a gmail bug not an evolution bug except that there is no way, save for ip address tracking, that gmail would have those email accounts connected and the only way I accessed them today before the switch was evolution. I am aware that this is not much to go on without it being easily repeatable but I wanted to post this in case others have experienced the same thing and we can start tracking it down. Is it even possible for evolution to change gmail passwords through the POP interface? This could be an error in their protocol... Steps to reproduce: 1. Uncertain Actual results: Expected results: Does this happen every time? Other information:
I think this can be related to bug 354923 and to bug 336291.
Are these five /different/ GMail accounts (different usernames for each)?
Yes, these were five totally separate GMail accounts. They were setup using the following information: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13287 I think the place to start would be to figure out if it is possible to change the password on a gmail account using POP access, how that would work, and then see why Evolution did it. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that :)
Does that still happen in a recent versions, like Evolution 2.32 or 3.0?
(In reply to comment #4) > Does that still happen in a recent versions, like Evolution 2.32 or 3.0? This hasn't happened since that first time (I now have Evolution 2.32.2). I understand that it's hard to find bugs if it's difficult to reproduce them. However, I am 100% sure it happened, I am a fairly advanced linux user and programmer, not that I don't make mistakes, but I have no idea how I could have changed all these passwords around by accident unless I did it while sleep walking or something. Anyway, if other's aren't experiencing it and we can't reproduce it, we can close the bug until it happens again to someone. E
Thanks for the update! Closing as OBSOLETE for the time being.