Mailbox lock and impersonation protection
Set a per-browser mailbox lock and understand user-switching protection.
PressedMail Lock adds a passphrase check before interactive mailbox access. Impersonation protection separately blocks detected user-switching sessions. Both features are available in Free and paid builds.
PressedMail Lock
Turn it on in your security settings with a passphrase of at least eight characters. From then on, plugin routes answer 423 Locked until this browser is unlocked. The unlock, status and settings routes stay reachable so the lock screen can render and take your passphrase.
Pick an inactivity timeout while you are there: never, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 4 hours. Change it later and the new value applies to every session immediately, because expiry is evaluated on read rather than stamped when the grant was made.
Grants are per browser
Unlocking one machine does not unlock the rest. PressedMail sets its own random cookie and stores an HMAC of that value against your user record. A different browser has a different cookie, so it has no grant. Logging out drops the cookie, which re-locks the mailbox on its own.
What is stored is a password_hash verifier and grant timestamps. Not the passphrase, not the raw cookie value, and nothing from your WordPress session. Up to twenty grants are kept. Ordinary activity slides the expiry on the current one, at most once a minute.
Locking again
- Lock now revokes this browser.
- Lock all sessions revokes every browser at once. No passphrase needed, because locking is always the safe direction.
- Change passphrase requires the current one, revokes every grant, then re-grants only the browser you are sitting at.
- Turn off requires the passphrase.
Forgotten it? Prove your WordPress password and the lock switches off. Nothing is encrypted under the passphrase, so a reset loses no mail, and someone who knows your WordPress password could sign in fresh anyway. That escape hatch is refused for a switched-in session.
Background sync keeps running
The lock gates interactive access, not the server. Mirror sync, scheduled sends and rules run inside a trusted system context bound to one account owner, so your mailbox keeps filling while you are locked out of looking at it. Unlock and the mail is already there.
Guessing is expensive
Five failed attempts start a lockout. It grows with each further failure, from 60 seconds up to a 15 minute ceiling, and it is stored against the user rather than the request, so hammering the REST endpoint from somewhere else does not reset it.
Impersonation blocking
PressedMail detects user switching through the User Switching plugin's own helper and through the switch actions firing on the request. When it sees one, mail access for that user is refused. The plugin refuses mailbox access through that detected switched session. This does not protect against an administrator who directly controls the server, database, or plugin code.
The preference lives on your user record and a missing value reads as protected. A brand new user, or one whose row was never written, is covered. Turning protection off is an explicit choice, and even then the security settings themselves stay out of reach of a switched session, so nobody can switch in and flip the toggle from underneath you.
Sharing and the lock (Ultimate)
On Ultimate you can share a mailbox, a calendar or a contact list with teammates on the same site. Each person answers to their own lock. Nobody else's.
- Your lock guards your session only. Lock your browser and the teammates you shared with keep working.
- A teammate who has a lock of their own unlocks it before they can open your shared mailbox, same as their own mail.
- Want someone out? Remove them from the share. Access stops on their next request. Locking your own browser won't do it.
- Shares never ride along with API keys or background sync. Sync still runs as the mailbox owner, and only the owner can schedule a send. A send to a shared contact list that a teammate starts runs as that teammate, and it stops if their access is removed first.
Free and paid
Both are in every build. The lock and impersonation blocking ship in Free and in the paid editions alike.