1448769 - Thunderbird suddenly forgot mail server password, now not remembering passwords

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Security, defect)

Description

[barrys]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/65.0.3325.181 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Two days ago I started TBird using likw I have for 5 years to access my company email. I entered my master pword as normal. Then I expected my new mail to show up.


Actual results:

I was present with a popup that said the login failed and asked to re-enter it.  After scrambling for a while I managed to retieve it.
I entered the old password and then got email.
I went online to see if this was common (Tbird throwing away my data) and saw a number of articles that indicated removing .db files with Tbird off. I did this. Notihng changed. I even reset my master pword. 


Expected results:

I should have been logged in like every other time in the past 4 yrs. I have checked with my email provider, my old pword still works, there are no new challenges. 

Tbird should remember my password. It doesn't. 
This is a NEW bug - not a repeat from yrs ago.

Comment 1

[Adam Reece]

Did you by any chance update from version 54 to 56 (or later)?

If you have updated to 56+ you may want to try downloading version 54 and installing that, just to see if it works again. (You don't need to remove 56+ first.)

Comment 2

[Anje]

barrys
Recently I have had a couple of people reporting this issue.
In their case it turned out they had used a product that cleaned up files.
If you have started to use a product like CCLeaner then it is likely it is removing those files.
CCleaner will remove passwords from Firefox but not realise  Thunderbird is a different program.

Please confirm you do not have or use any product that removes passwords or temp files to clean up computer.

Can you confirm that you checked to see if:
Options > Advanced > Passwords > show Passwords window was blank with no entries ?
the 'profile name' folder was missing these files?
cert8.db
key3.db
logins.json 

It is important to know if the above files had been deleted.

Did you check the above but discovered all passwords were still shown and files were still intact?
It is important to know that everything was intact.

Did you delete those files in an attempt to fix?

You mention you use a 'Master Password'.
You also mention a popup that said the login failed....Did it say the Master Password had failed or the logon to the account? Or did you assume it was the account?


Does this account use a POP GMAIL account ? 
Google will at times force you to logon to webmail as a means of checking you are really who you say you are.

I note you say you went online to check....did you logon to Thunderbird forum and ask a question about this issue?

Current version is 52.7.0
Please confirm the version you are using.

Comment 3

[Adam Reece]

Good thought, but I'm not sure CCleaner is the problem. I definitely use this, both at home and work with the exact same cleaning options:

* Internet Cache
* Internet History
* Cookies
* Download History
* Last Download Location
* Session
* Saved Form Information
* Compact Databases

I do NOT have the following enabled for cleaning:

* Site Preferences
* Saved Passwords

This issue only impacts my home PC though, where I've been using Thunderbird for over a decade longer.

Comment 4

[barrys]

Would using Ghostery and/or Privacy Badger impact Thunderbird? 
If so, how?
Why?
This issue is killing me. I'm near the point of getting another mail client. 

would this bug affect Sea Monkey?

Is there a fix? 

I thought this was the TBird forum, sorry.
Trying at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=39 now. 
If I find an answer there is there any value in posting it here?

Please accept my apologies if I am wasting your time. 
I react well to "get thee to a nunnery, btw"
THanks

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to barrys from comment #4)
> Would using Ghostery and/or Privacy Badger impact Thunderbird? 
> If so, how?
perhaps


> I thought this was the TBird forum, sorry.
> Trying at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=39 now. 
> If I find an answer there is there any value in posting it here?

absolutely. (I didn't find your posting)

Comment 6

[Adam Reece]

I tried to resolve this with the following:

1. Downgrade to version 56.0b4
2. Turn off master password in the options, thus decrypting everything
3. Upgrade to version 58.0b1 or later (I've tried 58.0b3, 59.0b1, 59.0b2, 60.0b1, and 60.0)

This also doesn't work though. There must be a fundamental change to how password stores are read as of version 58.0b1 regardless of whether or not they are encrypted with a master password.

What can we do about this without losing the lot?

It's very fortunate that you can just install a previous version over whatever is installed now. You may just need to put extensions back in place though, usually Lightning.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

pretty sure this is a duplicate.

Comment 8

[Randy]

I have over the last two days had a problem with saved passwords being automatically deleted by Thunderbird (68.10.00) when rebooting Ubuntu (20.04). This started after AOL emails underwent a forced change which no longer allows this email client to sign in normally (Damn Verizon anyway). Is it possible that they are causing all my passwords to be deleted on shutdown? I am getting ready to transfer my accounts to my gmail and hotmail accounts and abandoning them if this issue isn't resolved soon.

Comment 9

[Anje]

Randy - this is not a help forum. If you have any program running that is cleaning up session and password files then make Thunderbird folder exempt. Please create a new question in the Thunderbird Support Forum.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Adam, have you seen the problem since your original experience?

Comment 11

[Adam Reece]

Hi Wayne,

Not really, though I just worked around the issue.

My mailbox passwords are all in KeePass vaults so it didn't take very long to populate my TB installation passwords again. I had to consider the previously stored TB passwords as very gone and start with a fresh store, encrypted it, then populated it.
(I'm sure someone else either with their passwords not so well backed up elsewhere or a larger TB password store may be more miffed.)

I'm now on TB 78 today, and haven't lost passwords since I repopulated a fresh store, though that isn't to say the change between 56 and 58 won't still happen.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the update.
FWIW, version 91 is available