Why does Thunderbird ask for Master Password when program starts?

[nrundy]

I'd like Thunderbird to be able to start and run without having to input a password. Yet I'd like a password to be prompted for if Show Passwords is selected.

How come in order to have a password prompt appear when I select Show Passwords, I have to put up with a password prompt everytime I start the program? Is this the only way protecting the passwords from being seen in plain text can work, or it could be coded differently and Mozilla just hasn't done it?

Anybody else wish they could start Thunderbird without a password prompt but still get a password prompt when trying to view the account passwords in plain text?

[MadCow108]

thunderbird always needs the password to be able to decrypt your saved passwords and use it to login to your mail provider.

the only way to not have to enter a secret at login is to only store the passwords in encoded form (= no master password => not encrypted).

[Lucradia]

thunderbird always needs the password to be able to decrypt your saved passwords and use it to login to your mail provider.

the only way to not have to enter a secret at login is to only store the passwords in encoded form (= no master password => not encrypted).


This is why Pidgin doesn't ask for it, though, if that were true with empathy, then it should ask for the password too to decrypt the passwords.

[zekopeko]

What should actually happen is for Thunderbird to integrate into the system's keychain so that you are asked only once for your password instead of every application implementing their own keychain software.

[nrundy]

It would sure be preferable if the user only had to enter the Master Password when trying to view the Passwords.

[Lucradia]

What should actually happen is for Thunderbird to integrate into the system's keychain so that you are asked only once for your password instead of every application implementing their own keychain software.

Unfortunately, Thunderbird is independent of DEs :V

[alphacrucis2]

Unfortunately, Thunderbird is independent of DEs :V


True for the vanilla Moz T'bird but the version that will be shipped with 11.10 has been modified to integrate with the Unity DE as T'bird has been adopted as the default email client in that release. I don't know if keychain integration is part of that as I haven't tried 11.10 yet.

[Lucradia]

True for the vanilla Moz T'bird but the version that will be shipped with 11.10 has been modified to integrate with the Unity DE as T'bird has been adopted as the default email client in that release. I don't know if keychain integration is part of that as I haven't tried 11.10 yet.

Unity is not a DE.

Even the about page is not found: http://unity.ubuntu.com/about

It still is GNOME-heavy. If it were truly a DE, it'd strive to be lighter than GNOME, to be honest.

[alphacrucis2]

Unity is not a DE.

Even the about page is not found: http://unity.ubuntu.com/about

It still is GNOME-heavy. If it were truly a DE, it'd strive to be lighter than GNOME, to be honest.

Well yes. I guess calling it a shell for gnome is the best description. Funny that the "about" link doesn't work. Maybe it should be bugged on launchpad as a unity documentation fault.

[Lucradia]

Maybe it should be bugged on launchpad as a unity documentation fault.

It's working now.