[mosty OT] trollfilter software

[Craig White]

On Sun, 2012-01-01 at 07:54 -0800, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Sunday 01 January 2012 06:15:34 Craig White wrote:
> [snip]
> > POP3 is what it is - a retrieval of e-mail from a server where it
> > becomes the end client/user responsibility to store, manage, migrate
> > etc. Anyone who has more than 1 computer or more than 1 device accessing
> > e-mail from that account on the server, or simply gets a new computer
> > should easily be able to understand the limitations of POP3.
> > 
> > For those unwilling or unable to run their own IMAP server
> > (understandable), you can get an IMAP account from Google (Gmail) which
> > currently allows 7.5GB of e-mail storage for free. You can access that
> > e-mail from any computer or device capable of connecting to the Internet
> > and using a standard mail client such as Tunderbird, Outlook, Outlook
> > Express, Apple Mail, Evolution or whatever. You can access that e-mail
> > with a standard web browser. You are also then relieved of the burden of
> > storage and migration of your e-mail. You still get all the benefits of
> > IMAP.
> 
> Relieving yourself of the burden of local storage can backfire in some 
> situations.
> 
> Reliance on an Internet connection is the most obvious problem. It happened to 
> me more than once --- preparing some business presentation on my laptop while 
> flying over the Atlantic, only to find out that some crucial piece of data is in 
> the e-mail someone sent me previously... Or troubleshooting network problems, 
> where the instructions on how to reactivate the connection are in an e-mail on 
> the Internet... After a couple of such "inconveniences" with IMAP, I came to 
> appreciate the fact that sometimes there is a *benefit* in having local mail 
> storage. IMAP just cannot offer that.
> 
> Another concern is security. I've seen numerous woes of people whose 
> gmail/yahoo/hotmail/whatever accounts were compromised (typically due to weak 
> passwords), after which the intruder had access to *all* of their 
> correspondences, addressbooks and stuff. Besides harvesting e-mails for spam 
> and obvious confidentiality/privacy breaches, these situations can be very 
> embarrassing for the e-mail owner --- typically the intruder sends an e-mail 
> to all your correspodents saying that you are in a sudden bad financial 
> position and asking for money to be sent somewhere (and I know people who were 
> actually fooled by that). IMAP is a bliss for such scams.
> 
> Yet another concern is privacy paranoia. You can never be sure whether or not 
> Google is secretly indexing all your e-mail for later (ab)use, targeted 
> advertisements, social engineering and stuff. Also, if the "Big Brother" 
> (assuming one exists) wants to read your e-mail, they just need to ask Google, 
> rather than ask you. Sure, Google can index and keep a copy of all your mail, 
> regardless of IMAP/POP, but you can opt instead to use some other, "small" e-
> mail provider --- one which doesn't have the resources to index all your mail. 
> Using IMAP in such cases defeats the whoe idea of privacy.
> 
> Depending on particular needs, either IMAP or POP can be a better tool for the 
> job. I think that saying "POP is 1990's" is a tad bit too overstated. ;-)
----
not disputing access issues requiring Internet connection or security
concerns w/r/t others handling the storage and ignoring the basic fact
that e-mail is essentially an insecure medium to begin with [1] but...

In the 1990's computers and internet access were slow and expensive, now
storage, computers and Internet access is considerably less expensive
and thus the tendency to use more than 1 computer/device to access
e-mail is relatively common and is something that POP3 was never well
equipped to handle. Thus my statement that POP3 is so 1990's. But POP3
enables relatively unsophisticated users to access e-mail in an
unsophisticated fashion and manage their e-mail in an unsophisticated
way and if that suits them, then by all means, they should use it...
heck, I'm driving a car from before and a motorcycle from just after the
turn of the century   ;-)

Craig

[1] There are some who believe that the US Government has already
indexed/read your e-mails...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/11/us-government-secretly-reads-your-email



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