[Dovecot] Sending email over IMAP?

[Jan Kundrát]

Marc Perkel wrote:
> What I'm picturing, and I haven't figured out all the details, is that
> the IMAP server would also have an SMTP server associated with it and
> that the IMAP would hand outgoing email to the SMTP server. And that the
> SMTP server would have the alias information for that user account so it
> would be able to determine that the email address is real or a
> configured alias for that account. You do raise a good point.
> 
> I'm also am thinking about senders like Paypal and banks who are often
> spoofed. If the limited all their outbound email to sending over IMAP
> then they might be able to create a more secure sytem and because of
> their restrictiveness be able to somehow create a less spoofable more
> identifyable system.

Nope. They might use any method for their unbound mail, but as long as
it goes to jkt at gentoo.org, the SMTP server of Gentoo will be responsible
for final delivery to my account. It really can't take any stuff like
"sent via IMAP" into consideration as those flags might be easily
forged. The only attempt it can do is to check if the mail server that
submitted the message in question is actually listed in the sender's
domain's DNS information / DomainKey-Signature header. As a result, I
wouldn't be able to receive this message as it was forwarded by
talvi.dovecot.org...

> I think the main advantage here isn't for people like us but for
> companies who are trying to avoid fraud. I think there will be other
> side benifits to it as well that will be discovered once it becomes
> popular.

Can't see any of them :)

> So - I'm thinking that the convience factor, the ease of setup
> being the initial reason to do it and that once it's in place that other
> things will be discovered.

Ease of setup? Why? If you're a large company, you surely deploy
preinstalled computers to your users. It really doesn't matter if you
add one more item to the disk image.

Cheers,
-jkt

-- 
cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 258 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20060505/4bc56b51/signature.pgp