Thunderbird 60.3.3 fixes password deletion issue

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 7, 2018
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Thunderbird users who use a Master Password in the application to protect passwords may have been exposed to a password deletion issue in recent versions of the email client.

The release of Thunderbird 60.3.3 fixes the issue on all affected systems. The issue was introduced in client version 60.0 released in August 2018.

The major release introduced new functionality and made some changes to Thunderbird; one of those changes migrated the security databases key3.db and cert8.db used to store passwords and certificates to key4.db and cert9.db.

Thunderbird installations affected by the issue had saved passwords and private certificate keys deleted. The issue affected installations with master passwords. Master Passwords are not used by default but may be enabled in the Thunderbird email client to improve security.

Thunderbird users need to open Tools > Options > Security > Passwords to protect passwords with a Master Password. Just check the "use a master password" box on the page and follow the instructions to add it to the program.

thunderbird master password

The development team notes that affected users may restore a backed up version of the databases to regain access to passwords and private certificates. How that is done is not mentioned, however. The backups, with the .bak extension, are listed in the Thunderbird profile folder.

Affected users could rename the current file, e.g. key3.db, and rename the backup file key3.bak afterward. It is not clear if that is the method that the team suggests; make sure you back up all files before you proceed.

Thunderbird 60.3.3 fixes three additional issues:

  • Slow address book search and auto-complete functionality.
  • Plain text markup did not work with non-ASCII characters.
  • Links were not removed when a link location was removed in the link properties panel.

The version of the email client has three unresolved issues:

  • Issues when decoding messages with uncommon charsets such as cp932 or cp936. The team promises that this issue is going to be fixed in the upcoming Thunderbird 60.4.0 release.
  • CalDav access to some servers is broken. Workaround is to set the preference network.cookie.same-site.enabled to false.
  • Twitter chat is not working.

Users who run Thunderbird may notice that it is not offered currently when they run a manual check for updates under Help > About Mozilla Thunderbird. The official download page on the project website lists 60.3.2 as the latest version as well.

The new release is available on Mozilla's FTP though.

Tip: Find out how to migrate from Thunderbird 32-bit to 64-bit. Note that Thunderbird is offered as a 32-bit version officially only currently on Windows.

Summary
Thunderbird 60.3.3 fixes password deletion issue
Article Name
Thunderbird 60.3.3 fixes password deletion issue
Description
Thunderbird 60.3.3, a new version for the email client, fixes an issue that deleted saved passwords and private certificates under certain circumstances.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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