[Dovecot] Three oddities

Eric S. Johansson esj at harvee.org
Tue Aug 19 16:39:33 EEST 2003


Timo Sirainen explained:

> On Tue, 2003-08-19 at 04:07, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> 
>>in theory it would be possible to retrieve using pop3 and then push using imap 
>>but that is too ugly to even contemplate.
> 
> 
> Well, UW-IMAP supports that. I've actually thought about supporting as
> well :) It would work better to poll the pop3 box only when IMAP's INBOX
> is being accessed by IMAP client. Luckily this can be implemented as a
> plugin.

it's one of those "just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should" 
situations.  One of the big problems is that you bypass a lot of normal mail 
system functionality like antivirus or antispam filters.  In my antispam system 
(camram), I'm currently using procmail as a way of intercepting the mail stream 
and working on the messages.  Depositing messages via an imap backdoor would 
totally bypass filtering.

Additionally, if you use a collect pop3 box and multidrop distribution, you 
reduce your security exposure because only one password known (i.e. that for the 
pop box) versus 1 for every user.

I will need to look into the plug-in capability real soon now because it might 
be a good way to implement a correction mechanism for messages that aren't 
caught by the filter.

---eric




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