Closed Bug 126180 Opened 22 years ago Closed 14 years ago

Password storage and change is unintuitive and messy.

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Account Configuration, defect)

defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED EXPIRED

People

(Reporter: netdragon, Unassigned)

References

Details

There is no place in the account settings to change your password, and you
aren't even allowed to do it when you create your account. It asks you the
password the first time you do it. If that password doesn't work - I have found
that sometimes it doesn't even ask you for a new one. If password storage were
implemented perfectly, the current method would work (but be inefficient). It
should still be something you can change in Account Settings. I marked this as a
blocker because if the current method doesn't work, then this would be a good
workaround but currently you can't do anything. (Usually when there are
regressions).

My proposed change is to make it so you can enter the username and password
inside Account Settings if you want. Not only that, but it should let you do
this when you create the account.

The reason for this is my experience on a recent nightly:
1) Creating accounts would be faster if you could do it all at once.
2) I have found it doesn't always ask you for your user name and pass.
Especially if you enter the wrong user name and pass too many times. In the
subscribe dialog, you have to hit refresh to re-enter the information which is
unintuitive. It should ask you if the login doesn't work automatically.
3) All these problems could be worked around by also having the ability to do it
in Account Settings even if these individual problems aren't fixed.
4) The common method on other applications is by having the ability to do it in
Account Settings along with asking you when the password or username is incorrect.
This is not a blocker - please use the severity option carefully. Downgrading.
Severity: blocker → major
It is a blocker if you have to delete your mail account because you can't change
the password. Look at number 2.
Err sorry.. I meant critical.
When you are prompted for a password, and it asks you if you want it to remember
it, whether in mail or browser it stores it in the same place.
Edit->Preferences->Privacy & Security->Passwords
Just look for the password you misstyped, delete it, reload mail, and you're
able to correct.  Ditto for web forms.
Inconvenient, could be cleaner, but I don't see this as severity Major
*** Bug 147106 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Yes you can change your password by DELETING it in the password manager. However
there is no 'changing' of the password. 

Is seems that the only way to change the password is after deleting the password
in the profile manager. Even after I did this it tried to login with my old
password only this time it prompted me for changing the password. OK fine! Yes I
checked remember my password.

The problem is that there is no way to 'change' the password. You have to
delete the password and then when you check mail again it, wait for it to try to
use the old password and then it prompts for a new password.

To me it would seem that the password manager is flawed. It should allow one to
change a password not just delete them. I.E. have you ever used the unix
passwd command? (Windows also has a utility like this for the login) It  passwd)
prompts for the old and then allows for entering and confirming the new. This
should be the behavior of the password manager.  

This is just bad GUI design. It is also confusing that one has to go to the
password manager rather than in the account setup. Like the filer of this ticket
point out.  This is 2 places to go to instead of one.  The account setup should
have access to the password for that account and there should be a way to
"CHANGE THE PASSWORD".

To me it would make sense to not only store this in the password manager but
have the Mail -> server settings where one enters the User Name: to either have
a textfield for the password or a button that opens the password manager.  In
the case that a button to the password manager is used then the user should be
able to change passwords in the password manager.
Marking New. It would be better if there was a choice to edit the saved passwords.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
I hope I'm doing this correctly ? (using bugzilla that is..)
This Bug / feature is bloody anoying..
I use mozilla on 4 different PCs Linux & NT accessing 6 different email accounts..
And every time my password changes, Mozilla locks out my accounts 'cause it
keeps on trying the old one without having the brains to realise that it doesn't
work any more...
Please can we have a prompt for new password if the old one fails (you always
have the option of saying no...)
Apart from that I love Mozilla keep up the good work!
My $0.02:

If a password is stored and a PASS auth fails (i.e. POP3) then the user should
be prompted for the new password, the old invalidated, and re-asked if they wish
to have it stored.

Also, even if I have to dig into the prefs:advanced/password management/... and
delete the entry.  I am correctly asked for the new password, BUT after I type
it in nothing happens -- I have to re-Get Mail to finally receive my mail.

*Real* clunky.
Can we still vote on bugs? If so, this one gets my vote. Changing the mail
password should not be difficult. I am required to change mine every 30 days and
it is a tedious task. If the stored password does not work, then you should be
prompted for the new one.

Also, there should be an easier method to change the password even if you are
not prompted. Way too many steps right now. I hate to say this here, but the
Outlook Express 6 method is very easy for managing accounts.
Joey: For those that don't have/use Outlook Express 6, can you please provide a
detailed, numbered run-through of how Outlook Express 6 deals with passwords?
In Outlook express.. you'd go to the Tools Menu -> Services 
Then select the Microsoft Mail in the list box, then select the Logon tab and
there is a place to enter in a new password.

Okay, I'm not Joey, but I can definately see his point.  Why do I have to wait
till I log in to change the password?  Even Unix has a passwd command that
allows the changing of a password.  Basically the password manager should allow
you to select a site and then Update, Remove or Remove All options should be
avaliable.  I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to do. I thought that's
what this whole mozilla xul stuff was supposed to do, make adding things like
this easier.
mass re-assign.
Assignee: racham → sspitzer
I also vote to fix this bug.  (I notice that it's been languishing for a year.)
 I happen to use an ISP for which the main login password is automatically
equated to the mail password, i.e. they change simultaneously.  So when I "Get
Mail" after changing the login password, it just says "The mail server
responded:  Bad password or unknown username", then does nothing when I click
"OK".  (Like, thanks for the info!)  No opportunity is given to alter the
password.  Thanks to the comments in this thread, I did manage to track down the
password manager under "Privacy Settings" or whatever, and fixed the problem,
but that's too awkward.  Maybe some artificial intelligence would help, like
searching for "password" or "login" in the mail server error message string.  
(For that matter, mail servers just don't return any other error messages,
unless they're flat out broken, so an automatic opportunity to change the
password would make sense.)


As long as its not M$ style AI ;-)
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
Assignee: sspitzer → mail
QA Contact: nbaca
MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614
Status: NEW → UNCONFIRMED
MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but still has no comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project 5 years ago.

Because of this, we're resolving the bug as EXPIRED.

If you still can reproduce the bug on SeaMonkey 2 or otherwise think it's still valid, please REOPEN it and if it is a platform or toolkit issue, move it to the according component.

Query tag for this change: EXPIRED-20100420
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → EXPIRED
Ever confirmed: true
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