Recent and upcoming changes around authentication for Gmail IMAP, POP, and SMTP.

Connectikpeople.co, soon #Retinknow recalls that Google has begun increasing the security checks that occur when logging in with a user’s Google password. This includes access via Gmail IMAP, POP, and SMTP-MSA. 

When it comes to OAuth 1.0 XOAUTH authentication mechanism for Gmail IMAP and SMTP-MSA, it is deprecated and will stop being supported on May 5, 2015.

This means developers must migrate to XOAUTH2 in order to continue authenticating to Gmail after that date. The migration guide is available and Instructions for developing your XOAUTH2 code are in the XOAUTH2 documentation.