This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Sharing a machine, I want a separate private thunderbird e-mail account - the other user already has one - what would be the best way of doing this?

  • 3 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Zenos

more options

I would like a separate Thunderbird e-mail account to one already existing on a machine that I need to use. The account needs to be entirely separate, with separate calendar, folders and contacts etc , and password protected from other accounts. Can this be done within one instance of Thunderbird?

Many thanks.

Chris

I would like a separate Thunderbird e-mail account to one already existing on a machine that I need to use. The account needs to be entirely separate, with separate calendar, folders and contacts etc , and password protected from other accounts. Can this be done within one instance of Thunderbird? Many thanks. Chris

All Replies (3)

more options

Thanks for this, and it does partly respond to what I want. But is there a way of making the alternative Thunderbird profile private e.g. with a password?

Or is there some other way to do this?

Cheers,

Chris

more options

The standard way to share a computer and manage privacy is to use User Accounts as provided by the Operating System.

Thunderbird is designed on the assumption that you'll use such facilities to run different users' email accounts.

Each User Account under the Operating System has its own user files and accordingly, its own Thunderbird (and Firefox) profiles.

Whilst Thunderbird can be set to work with multiple profiles, thus providing separation of accounts, it makes no promises about privacy or security. And it doesn't encrypt stored data, so has no way of preventing one user from seeing another's email correspondence.

There are tools (add-ons) that can apply a password to see particular folders within Thunderbird, but I can't think of a way to password protect a profile. The protection offered by the folder passwords is weak, as as said before, your data is not encrypted.