When using imap
in mutt you have the
possibility to use gpg to decrypt your password instead of having it as
plaintext in your configuration file (.muttrc), see
ArchWiki how
to do that.
However, if you consider using POP3, then you will also need to install and
enable msmtp (not strictly needed),
fetchmail and
procmail. Ubuntu have created a quite nice
guide of
the steps involved.
Just as mutt also msmtp have the possibility to use gpg in runtime instead
of having the password stored in plaintext. The way to do that in msmtp is to
put a line mention gpg in your $HOME/.msmtprc file.
passwordeval "gpg --quiet --for-your-eyes-only --no-tty --decrypt ~/.msmtp-gmail.gpg"
However, fetchmail doesn't have the same option. So, mutt and msmtp is
fine, but you still have to put your password in a cleartext file when
configuring fetchmail. Clearly there must be a better way to handle this? I
downloaded the source code
(fetchmail-6.3.26)
and did a quick and dirty hack. I just modified the main function in the file
fetchmail.c, so that instead of having to provide the password on command line
(when password is not set in $HOME/.fetchmailrc) it makes use of gpg similar to how
both mutt and msmtp does. It isn't pretty ... but it works (tested on Arch Linux
on a Raspberry PI). To try it out, use the same gpg encrypted file as you use
for msmtp, i.e, $HOME/msmtp-gmail.gpg and patch fetchmail using this patch and
rebuild.