Re: Making GNUS continue to work with Gmail

[Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>]

>>>>> On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 17:25:27 +0200, Uwe Brauer <oub@mat.ucm.es> said:

    >>>> "RP" == Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com> writes:
    >>>>>>> On Mon, 10 Aug 2020 08:54:38 -0700, "T.V Raman" <raman@google.com> said:
    T> soyeomul@doraji.xyz (황병희) writes:
    T> That will let you send email, not read email using gnus

    >> You can use the same "password" in .authinfo.gpg and have it be used
    >> for IMAP.

    Uwe> I am confused, now, the strategy (황병희) describes could work for
    Uwe> gnus, even after February 15th, 2021?

    Uwe> Then where is the problem?

    Uwe> What do I miss here?

The problem is that today you can turn on 'app specific passwords',
and generate one for Gnus to use, and thatʼs the end of it. Tomorrow
you need to generate an Oauth2 token by registering an 'app' with
Google, jumping through some more hoops, and generating a 'token' that
you then use with Gnus. Google can probably revoke that token whenever
they want, and then you need to jump through the hoops again.

The end result is the same: a string that Gnus uses for
authentication. The proces to get it will require logging into Google
with a browser [1], and cutting and pasting a bunch of identifiers around,
which is much more involved and easier to mess up.

The alternative is to register an 'Emacs' app, do the hoop jumping,
and stick the various secret tokens in the Emacs sources, but as I
understand it thatʼs expressly forbidden by Google's terms-of-use
(correct me if Iʼm wrong, I haven't read them).

Iʼm starting to agree with Stefan here: maybe itʼs time to start using
a different email provider.

Robert

Footnotes:
[1]  This is in itself problematic for some people, since this
     requires running non-Free javascript code.