How to Set Password for Thunderbird Emails?
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross platform email client that provides emails, newsgroup, news feed etc. It allows the users to read, store and reply to the emails. It has incredible features like message management, junk filtering, message archive, smart folders etc. Apart from all these functionalities, protecting the emails are also very important. Security is a major concern in Thunderbird and so password protection is necessary in order to protect the Thunderbird profile. In this section we would discuss the steps to easily set password for Thunderbird Accounts in order to keep the emails secure. But by default Thunderbird does not provide any password protection functionality. This could cause issues when multiple users have access to the same system.
User Query: "How to define a password to open thunderbird account to allow access to user profile. I would like to prevent access on my earlier emails to someone who could use my system."
Need for Thunderbird Password Protection
There is a hand full of reasons to protect Thunderbird with password, with security being the prime reason.
- With non-protected profile anyone can access Thunderbird, read the emails, contacts and other informations and this could cause problems when multiple users have access to same system which is the common case in work stations.
- This would make it easy for the hackers to access your mail accounts and all your emails. Sometimes, there might be personal informations like banking details in your mails and the hackers would access it and can cause serious troubles.
So it is very important to perform set password to open Thunderbird process and thus protect the data inside it.
Steps: Set Password for Thunderbird Account
The following steps would help you to protect Thunderbird profile with password and prevents unauthorized access to the emails and data.
Thunderbird Password Protection using Add-ons
Mozilla Thunderbird supports add-ons which are applications that let you personalize the account with extra functionality and style. One such Add-on is Profile Password that helps to protect the emails with strong passwords. The extension would add a new entry to Tools menu of the email client. This would protect the account from mails of unauthorized people by blocking the unauthorized mails. With the set password option you can set password in Mozilla Thunderbird.
Tips: While protecting the emails through passwords there are some possible issues that could occur. As we have discussed, when we set password for Thunderbird emails, it blocks mails from unauthorized users and there are chances for some of the required emails getting blocked. So while setting up the account setting be cautious.
Thunderbird Password Protection using Encryption
Encryption is a technique by which you can completely protect Thunderbird profile from external users. It encrypts or protects the data using a secret key. For the profile encryption process an open source program called True Crypt can be used. Here the set up process is a bit complicated but gives the highest possible protection. The basic step for the process is to create an encrypted container. Once the set up process is complete, mount the True Crypt whenever you need to access the data. To do this add a password to the True Crypt selected during the creation of encrypted container.
Using Secure Master Password
A master password can be used to protect sensitive informations like site passwords. It protects the stored passwords and not the profile directly. Follow the steps below for Thunderbird Password Protection:
This way you can set password for Thunderbird Account to make the entire data in Thunderbird safe and secure.
Bottom Lines
Protection and security is a major concern in any application whether it is small or large. To ensure safe and secure storage of emails, contacts etc password protection is necessary in all application. Thunderbird being an email client with a number of users all over the world, security is serious issue to be taken care of. In the above section we had informative discussion on how to set password for Thunderbird Account to ensure the protection of data inside it.