Mysterious Gmail

Yesterday my Outlook stopped working with corporate mail on a jail mail: it began to display a window asking for a username and password. Login and password were correct, because the web interface worked great, but the outlook mail could neither send nor receive. I did not change any settings in Outlook or JMail, I did not dabble with firewalls.

By the method of scientific poking, the problem was solved. Changed the password to a stronger one, and it worked. But was it really impossible to notify me at least somehow about this, especially since the service is far from free?