I have a Gmail account from 2004 which I only keep because I was dumb enough to ever register it in the first place (Google are pure evil), and because e-mail accounts are no longer possible to register, so I couldn't switch either way.
For years, I've been using my own e-mail client which fetches any new e-mails via IMAP and uses PHPMailer to talk to their SMTP server to send e-mails. This has been working for a long time, although they sometimes randomly decide to cut off my access, forcing me to log in to their vile web interface and answer "it was me" to their broken "security" mechanism which randomly decides that "somebody else" has logged in to my account with my password, which is never the case and logically impossible.
Anyway, today, as this once again has happened, nothing works. I'm able to log in to the web interface and I've done the usual nonsense and gone through the settings. "Allow insecure app access" (which is total newspeak) is still enabled, etc. Nothing indicates that my e-mail client would be blocked. Yet it is. I can't fetch e-mails via IMAP and, when trying to send e-mails, I get the debug error:
SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/TroubleshootingNeedless to say, that URL doesn't give any helpful hints, as always is the case with "troubleshooting" webpages.
With debug enabled, it logs:
535-5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted. Learn more at535 5.7.8 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=BadCredentialsSMTP ERROR: Password command failed: 535-5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted. Learn more at535 5.7.8 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=BadCredentialsSMTP Error: Could not authenticate.CLIENT -> SERVER: QUITNeedless to say, I had not changed the password when this started happening, and that URL doesn't give any helpful advice (of course).
I've tried to change the password just to see if that would change anything, but the exact same error happens.
Sometimes when this happens, it wants me to log in and enter a CAPTCHA. It doesn't do this now. Nothing whatsoever indicates that this error should happen, and I have certainly not changed anything in my system.
PHPMailer is up to date, as is PHP, as is always the case.
Unsurprisingly, I found not a word about this online. But that says nothing since the Internet appears to have died in recent years, and nobody ever bothers reporting or discussing all these broken services at this point.
Has Google finally blocked me out permanently? I will never use Gmail from their horrible web interface.
