How can I avoid putting my e-mail password in plain text in my `.fetchmailrc` file?

Question

How can I avoid putting my e-mail password in plain text in my .fetchmailrc file? My file looks like this:

poll pop.XXX.com with proto POP3
user 'abc' with password 'PASSWORD' there is foobar here 
mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" 
options
no keep
ssl

I learned this from http://www.andrews-corner.org/mutt.html but it saves my password in plain text, which I'd like to avoid.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 05 '11 at 19:51

Store the .fetchmailrc in an encrypted filesystem (possibly ecryptfs or encfs) and symlink it to ~/.

If you don't want to move the entire fetchmailrc file, you can create a ~/.netrc with the password:

machine pop.XXX.com
    login abc
    password "Password"

1 Answers1