On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 09:03:49 -0500, Mayayana wrote:

"Ralph Fox" wrote
|
| Thunderbird will open a 'Sign In With Google' window when you are setting
| up OAuth2 authentication with Gmail in Thunderbird.
| | Q. Can you confirm you use OAuth2 authentication?
|

I'm curious why you would need OAuth2 with a desktop
or laptop.

Simple. So I can turn off "Allow less secure apps" and still
access Gmail with Thunderbird.

Thunderbird has an OAuth2 option for this purpose.

Isn't the point of that to force phone apps
to officially register as legitimately trustable? I may be
missing something, but it looks to me like the unique
aspect is that 1) the app has to ask you for permission
and 2) the app has to confirm its identity to gmail. Neither
of those steps would be relevant using TBird on Windows.

No.

The unique aspect of OAuth is that
* it allows limited access to only a subset of services;
* it does not store the main account password.

Say some crim breaks into my car, steals my laptop, and manages
to extract the Gmail credentials out of Thunderbird.

(A) If I had used my main Google account password in Thunderbird,
the crim could use it to log on as me and change both my Google
password and my Google account recovery options. That would
lock me out of my Google account.

(B) When I use OAuth2 authentication, the crim would get only an OAuth2
password with access only to Gmail. The crim would not be able
to change my Google password nor my account recovery options.
I can cancel that OAuth2 password without having to update my
main Google password in umpteen programs/devices.


Google consider a program to be secure when it is not using your main
Google account password. That is it. That is all. The program can
use either OAuth2 or an "app password" instead of your mail Google
account password.


--
Kind regards
Ralph

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