How can I handle secondary authentication in Google Mail from Perl?

Question

This is a pure Google Mail question. I am accessing Google Mail via Perl's Net::SMTP::SSL module. From time to time the authentication fails not because of a bad password, but because of some additional password check. The only way to unlock it is via the web interface with an additional entry of text presented as an image. Has anyone seen a similar issue and knows a fix. I looked at the Google forums, but did not find anything.

Answer 1

You are having this problem because the method you are using to access Gmail is not supported by Google and I am fairly sure it is a violation of their TOS (see 5.3). If you wish to access Gmail from inside of a program I would suggest using either its IMAP or POP3 interface with the appropriate Perl module.

Since you seem to be sending mail, you should use their SMTP interface with one of Perl's SMTP modules. You may find Google's information about setting up IMAP clients helpful.