[Dovecot] Idea: POP3 deletion as a flag

[Noel Butler]

On Fri, 2013-05-03 at 12:40 -0700, Professa Dementia wrote:


> 
> Google has already admitted that they do not delete email, even when 


Google does many may many non compliant things.


> those emails are deleted from the Trash.  Google states that emails may 
> be archived for a minimum of 2 months past when they are deleted - 
> emails, may, however, be saved forever.  You do not know.  Google has 


It's just one of many many reasons why I don't, and wont, ever use
privacy invading scum like gmail.


> people's personal information.  Google is large enough that they are 
> under scrutiny and have to obey EU privacy laws.  However, adding this 
> feature to Dovecot could put smaller email operators in violation of 
> those laws.  Not deleting emails when the client says to, is effectively 


How so, although I can not see anyone I know using such a feature in the
hosting/ISP world, I could see it used in corporate sense - in Australia
for instance, businesses are required to keep company correspondences
(incl email) for at least five years, so if I ever moved to the private
sector, I guess my opinion may change and I may enable it.

Should be of no concern to the EU (and I credit the EU when it comes to
privacy matters), as it would need to be manually added option by the
server admin, ie: not default - your car can go to 200+ K/hr, but you
don't get in and floor it every day do you. 

Incidentally, the last time I read the pop3 RFC, admittedly some decade
or so ago (and yeah it's likely been updated since?) I can not recall
there ever being a  "MUST" or "SHOULD" when it comes to deleting
messages (it might have been deliberately omitted)  apart from the
server MUST NOT delete messages that are not marked for deletion.


> The problem is already solved by the POP client.  Most have a setting 
> that allow emails to remain on the server for a period of time.  The 
> default is generally 5 days, but can be set to any value desired.  Apple 
> Mail, Thunderbird and outlook all have this feature.  Most smartphones 
> also have this feature, including the iPhone, Blackberry and Android 

unfortunately many users are nowhere near as smart as their
smartphones/clients, with BYOD becoming more prevalent (something I  for
privacy/security reasons do not agree with permitting),  those users
need set their own equipment up, and may not configure leave on server,
etc, violating laws or company policies).


> 
> So in conclusion, in my experience, this feature is not one that has 
> been requested, it makes Dovecot more complex and behave in ways not 


20 lines of code and manually having to add a single word to pop options
is complex?  I'm one for KISS, as those networks rarely, if EVER, have
problems, since there is nothing to go wrong, but even I have no
objections to such an option, despite never intending to use it.

Cheers
Noel

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