GMail, POP, IMAP, Configuration and Not A Word about Captcha!
I have installed POP GMAIL on a several email clients from Thunderbird oo Outlook Express to Eudora. Further, in the past year I have assisted iPhone owners and Apple Mail clients with Google's IMAP implementation.
Yesterday, I decided to create a GMAIL account for my newest endeavor and I figured I would just add an IMAP account to my Thunderbird client.
I did not even attempt to read Google's help as the process is pretty straight forward. Incoming server is 
imap.gmail.com and outgoing server is smtp.gmail.com. When configuring the incoming server the security implementation is SSL and upon selection updates the port automatically to port 993. The outgoing server is little more involved as you must select TLS as the secure connection and the port value 587 must be entered manually.
Then I logged into my GMAIL account and went to the account settings, selected the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab and enabled IMAP.
Straight forward right?? Well, back to the Thunderbird client and clicked on get mail, TBird requested my password, and then requested my password, and then requested my password, and requested my password....
What the tarnation is going on??? So, off to the Google docs for TBird. First off, let me just say Google always has great documentation, I have found it to be outstanding, clear and concise information to support Google products. Always professionally documented, in most cases.
However, after following the Google Docs I could not find a solution. So. I went to bed. 3 hours later, as usual, I could'nt sleep and I figured I would give it another shot.
That's when I ran into the Captcha Unlock? Now you may know what captcha is, but if you do not its simply a tool that protects websites from bots1 by generating an image or simple tests of addition, subtraction etc. tin the attempt to decipher humans from computer programs.
As an example, if a graphic of a alphanumeric phrase is distorted a human can easily decipher it and enter the alphnumeric sequence in to the text field and pass the test. Where computer programs, currently, are unable to to achieve this interpretation. In short, Google use this technology in the GMAI L implementation to protect from bots making gmail accounts at random.
I found the Captcha Unlock reference perusing Google (Captcha Unlock) Group. Unfortunately, GMAIL Help does not address this as a problem in the POP or IMAP section of the standard help. Im sure this will be handled as time goes on but for now let's get the problem solved.
If you can NOT log in to GMAIL from any email client, Outlook, Outlook Express , Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Eudora, Entourage , Vista Mail after repeated attempts and password failures than simply click on this link Captcha Unlock enter your Google ID and your account will be ulocked.
Hopefully, Google will get GMAIL upto date on this point and save future users alot of headaches. With 1 Million+ iPhones sold last Friday and growing.... I am sure this to be an issue currently and for quite sometime.
| 1 | Bots that learn a web form to create profiles can create 100's of profiles/accounts and wreck a poor webmaster's life. Captcha protects against this type of nonsense. Google impements this solution and its only makes sense. |
Unfortunately there’s still no reference in Google docs about CAPTCHA. I’ve
spent many hours trying to find what’s wrong. Anyway ,even if u disable
CAPTCHA after a while the problem appears again when you log from another
computer or different ip address