took a look at ProtonMail today.Their website says:
..................................................
you can download the app, find answers to frequently asked questions and get full support on the ProtonMail Bridge homepage. Bridge software is currently available only to ProtonMail paying users.
We do not offer POP3 support, but ProtonMail Bridge will allow you to download all of your mail into your client and export it from there.
....................................................
cost is 4 euro per month which I might be ok with.
But I use POP3 to get all my mail into Seamonkey Mail.
They say they support Thunderbird so it may work with Seamonkey mail.
At one time I had six email accounts on yahoo , gmail, hotmail, ...
using pop3 you can do this and bring all the email into one place.
I sort and filter the mail for my business and personal use.
I also have archives back to 2010 in seamonkey mail.
Most providers want you to use their interface so they can get $ from making you look at their advertisements.
POP3 uses SSL/TLS so I don't understand why the providers claim its not secure.
There is nothing in my emails that I would consider secret anyway.

Protonmail doesn't sell advertising space. They are funded by their paying customers.

BUT they say
"We do not offer POP3 support"
so no use to me

looked at email on riseup.net
seemed ok till I found this on their site
.....................................................
We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression.
.....................................................
I'm a day trader . spend a lot of time on the stock exchanges in Canada and the US . Love Capitalism.
Wouldn't be where I am today without it.

I must have had a Google/GMail a/c for over 2 decades. (2000? 2001? So long ago that I seem to have had it forever... ) I also have accounts with GMX, Protonmail, Hotmail (yeah, yeah; I know..!!) & RoundCube. None of these others care whether I use 2FA.....yet. The option's there, but that's ALL it is; an 'option'.

I know Google have been nagging me to go 2FA for at least the last 4-5 years. I'm not against it as such; I can see the security benefits of it. What bugs me is the inconvenience of having to effectively sign-in TWICE every time I want to use it.

-------------------

I got invited to join the staff over at BleepingComputer shortly after the start of the pandemic. As a moderator, one of our 'duties' is to take turns 'patrolling' the site's Discord server. The way it's been set-up, mods MUST sign-in using 2FA. No options.

Since I'm an old fart when it comes to mobile comms - I only have an ancient Nokia 'dumbphone', with no effective internet (which suits me down to the ground), I can't use the 'preferred' options of either Google's 'Authenticator' app, or the equally popular 'Authy'. So, scouting around led me to the rather effective OPTClient, from here:-

https://github.com/paolostivanin/OTPClient

Very neat, because, amongst other things it'll 'read' a PNG screenshot of a standard QCode, which many use for 2FA authorization with smartphone apps. Since all my internet time is spent on the Linux desktop, this works very well for me.

Problem solved.

I normally prefer to access my e-mail via Thunderbird. At least this shouldn't present any issues when I finally HAVE to go 2FA with Google, since they've had conformity with 0Auth for years.....


Mike.

It's good that you found a solution.
I asked about Microsoft Authenticator just recently but apparently, nobody has found a way to make it run on a PC.
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...or-4175708499/

@vmelkon:-

It's quite neat. Once your 2FA 'token' has been entered into its database, no further user input is required.....except to fire-it up when needed.

Click on the entry in the list that you need, and the one-time password value is auto-copied to the clipboard, ready for pasting. Piece of cake. Never failed to work yet.

Mike.

Don't they offer IMAP instead?
It can do everything POP3 does, and more, and is supported by 100% of all email clients.
It's kinda been the default for more than a decade now.

@ ondoho:-

Nowt to do with whether IMAP is available or not....which it almost certainly IS. I've never quite understood it myself, but I've come across several individuals who insist that it's important to them to be able to dig out, say, a specific e-mail from one particular respondent, dating back - for arguments sake - 16? 17? years.

They would far sooner clutter up their drives with years-worth of out-of-date crap in order to have this ability. And they always trot out the tired old saw about wanting full 'control' over their personal mail.....along with the excuse that they have no idea whether any item will turn out to BE important, so it's essential to keep absolutely everything.

Anybody with a shred of sense would use IMAP, make copies of anything important, then delete the original. It doesn't HAVE to be viewable in an e-mail client, either; it's only a text document when all's said & done, so any text viewer would do for retrieving the content.....

(*shrug*)

I know most of us on here are probably 'geeks' of one stripe or another. But there's a HUGE difference between being a 'geek'.....and being a complete 'nerd'.


Mike.

What bugs me about Google's move to 2FA is how they handled it.

First they sent an email saying "Soon you'll sign in with 2-Step Verification." Very declarative. Not much of an explanation. Nothing about how to configure this in common email clients.

Second they sent an email saying "On May 30, you may lose access." For security. Except for business customers. I guess security isn't as important to business customers. This time they have a little help, but only for Outlook.

It comes across very much like "We made a decision, take it or leave it." I am accustomed to being informed and having a more clear explanation as opposed to being talked down to and herded around.

This totally fits with past behavior like abruptly ending Google Reader. It's pretty clear who is leading the dance and what the motives are.

Regarding "full control," i archive all my email locally and delete it from the server via IMAP. I keep all email for all time.

Somewhere in the late 1990's i had a hard drive failure and no backups. Consequently, i lost my email history prior the late 1990's. I regret this loss because it was a record of my life, kind of like a journal or photo album. I totally understand when other people want to hang on to their email correspondence. It's not all that large compared to other modern media. We have plenty of space.

Regarding whether it is viewable in an email client, or just a text document: This was a nice thing about MH and Maildir. For a period of time one could have one's cake and eat it too. One could just "grep -lr" in the Maildir. However, that doesn't work so great now that modern email clients using MIME encodings like base64 UTF-8 for plaintext email. Thus notmuchmail.org

But all this can be achieved with IMAP - you are in full control.
Granted, it's not the default behaviour of most email clients, but most (certainly thunderbird, claws, evolution) can easily be adjusted to do just that.

I backen this.
Pop3(s) behavior can be imposed using IMAP(s). It is the only thing I ever did with IMAP until I found the overhead too big and began simplifying whatever I could. With the recent modifications done to both protocols they have become – basically – interchangeable.

First IMAP was more secure than POP3, then POP3 caught up, then everything became complicated for a while (i.e. I do not understand anything). I believe they are both “okay”, today.

http://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox
in the old days to find "allow less secure apps"
settings->all settings->accounts and import->other google account settings->security->allow less secure app access
the above has disappeared but now we have
settings->all settings->Forwarding and POP/IMAP
says POP is enabled for all mail that has arrived since 2/12/08
also other POP info and the POP configuration instructions are still present in google help
I changed my
Authentication method: from Normal password to OAuth2
on both incoming and out going
Now https://myaccount.google.com/security
shows Third Party Apps with account access ... Mozilla ThunderBird Email has access to gmail
also shows the Less Secure App Access is turned on and a warning that google will turn it off on May 30 2022
so it looks like OAuth2 isn't secure enough for gmail.
To me it is not clear what they want.

I would guess they (mostly) want you to use their mail via the web instead of downloading it. That way they can see everything instead of needing to look in the archives or having it downloaded and deleted before the backup stores it.

Google allows for application specific passwords for 2FA. I set Claws mail to use google 2FA yesterday. Go to google and follow their instructions for application specific passwords for 2FA. It'll give you a 16 char password to use in your email client instead of the one that you were using. Claws works with it just like it always did. Apparently you only have to do that once per app. I think that you can use that password with another machine with Claws on it.

Now, I have to try and figure out why I haven't been getting thread mail from LQ for 3 weeks now. I haven't changed anything in LQ settings. I assume that google must have kicked back a mail, and the LQ mail server quit, like it does.

Edit:
Ok, I jiggled my LQ mail settings and I'm getting mail from LQ again. I figured gmail spit a mail back for some reason.

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