Maybe I am not understanding your problem correctly, but from all the checks I have done, I am not able to get into the password protected galleries without supplying the password.
For example - I just created a gallery at the root level and marked it private and supplied a password to it. If you got to
my recent list, you
don't see the gallery listed. Now, even if tell you that the URL of the gallery is
http://www.pbase.com/srijith/passwd_test if you click on the URL, you will not be allowed access unless you give the correct password.
How does it work for you?