Mail.app always asks for password on error?!

I meant to file this bug for Happy Apple Bug Friday, but after forgetting about it a couple of times, when I remembered it today, I thought I'd file it right away. Sadly, RadarWeb seems to be in java.lang.NullPointerException-land, so this is an unfiled bug for now:

It's about Apple Mail.app. Whenever an error occurs doing login, be it a brittle AirPort connection or whatever, it asks for the password. Shouldn't it really show the error message? I can understand that they just went for the most likely error (not surprising with the state of error reporting in the Cocoa and CoreFoundation frameworks -- about which I think I also filed a bug ages ago), but try explaining that to my Dad.

Even worse, this is an exploit waiting to happen: If users become used to Mail "forgetting" the password during its periodic mail checks, they won't at all be surprised if a similar dialog box suddenly comes up, and they might feed their password into a Trojan ...

Update: Filed as Bug #4291041

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