MBOX-Line: From asuth at mozilla.com  Fri Aug 29 08:50:30 2014
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Andrew Sutherland <asuth@mozilla.com>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:53 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Seeking clarity on Gmail "Access for less secure
 apps" setting for non XOAuth2 access
Message-ID: <5400A146.4020602@mozilla.com>

The blog post 
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.de/2014/04/new-security-measures-will-affect-older.html 
seems to have come to fruition as the "Access for less secure apps" 
setting as documented at 
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en (but not 
particularly hyperlinked to/from many of the other GMail docs.)  It 
sounds like this started happening around July 15th, noting that 
2-factor accounts are not affected.

For the Firefox OS Gaia Email app we're trying to figure out exactly 
what the impact of this is and who is affected.  It does not seem 
straightforward because it seems like there are a number of heuristics 
in play.  Specifically, I have observed:

- My existing non-2-factor account seems to have been grandfathered so 
that the setting is enabled.

- I just created a brand new non-2-factor gmail account.  The Gmail 
Settings UI indicated IMAP was disabled and the "Access for less secure 
apps" account security setting was also disabled.  I then added the 
brand-new account in the app and things just magically worked.  IMAP got 
enabled in the gmail UI and "access for less secure apps" also got enabled.

I applaud both the effort to protect users and the use of whatever 
heuristics these are to avoid needlessly inflicting pain on users. 
However, it does leave me confused what users will be impacted.  Is it 
just GMail users over a certain account age who haven't leveraged PLAIN 
logins in some number of months?  Is it dependent on the suspicious 
login heuristics?  I do know that some testers have run into this 
problem recently, so it's not imagined.

So my questions are these:

1) Is it possible to get a better understanding of what's going on with 
when the setting will be enforced?

2) Is there some other venue for staying up-to-date with information 
like this for Gmail?  That blog post was somewhat nebulous, didn't get 
any coverage on a blog I was subscribed to at the time where I would 
have expected a mention (http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/), and I don't 
believe it or its contents were directly posted to any of these IMAP 
standardsy lists.  The July 15th thing seemed to be something people 
just inferred after it happened.

3) Is there some way I can help update documentation/hyperlinks on pages 
like https://developers.google.com/gmail/xoauth2_protocol (to link to 
the less secure apps docs)?  On 
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en there is an 
affordance to say the article is not helpful and provide feedback, but I 
don't see anything on the developers site.


I do want to make it clear that I really appreciate Google/Brandon 
Long's active participation on this list and I understand how busy 
everyone involved likely is.  I'm also on board with the idea that, like 
web browsers, email apps/user agents should keep up with the state of 
the art standards for the benefit/safety/privacy of their users and the 
health of the net.  It's just that having more of an explicit heads up 
would help us make sure that we prioritize our engineering resources 
appropriately ahead of time rather than having to do things reactively.

Thanks!
Andrew

PS: The Gaia email app has also been deficient in notifying servers via 
"ID", if that's the venue I've been missing.  Although if so, I'd still 
argue this list or its friends would also be an appropriate place to post.

