Subject: IMAP v. POP

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 12:41:34 -0400

It was said about IMAP versus POP mail:
>Perhaps those folks should use an implementation that can manipulate mail
>offline and then sync with the server later.

Dan says:
The group I know have an information technology group which raid and
confiscate anything they don't install. They terrorize everyone in this huge
fortune 100 company, and if they don't run the approved software they delete
everything. They only allow IMAP (not POP), and its all connection oriented.
The idea is this is more secure. But ultimately, obviously, people can
screen capture and/or print anything, somehow. Then it can be reabsorbed in
digital form; (scan, etc).

I guess I realize, nearly by definition, you could make an offline/online
IMAP implementation.

I think POP is awefully functional though. If it just had passwords not in
the clear, and a better way to defer big attachments, I think it would be
nearly perfect protocol/service.

For home and casual use though POP is cool. You can only expect so much from
it. And with the extensions it can do a lot.

There must be a pure 'push' email protocol either in the works or done, is't
there?

Regs
Dan

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 13:07:20 +0200

--On onsdag, juni 04, 2003 12:41:34 -0400 Dan Kolis 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> confiscate anything they don't install. They terrorize everyone in this
> huge fortune 100 company, and if they don't run the approved software
> they delete everything. They only allow IMAP (not POP), and its all
> connection oriented. The idea is this is more secure. But ultimately,
> obviously, people can screen capture and/or print anything, somehow. Then
> it can be reabsorbed in digital form; (scan, etc).
>

of course, that's what I use every day. [No advertisements on this list, so 
I won't mention which one it is....]

> nearly perfect protocol/service.

it has both.... if you use RFC 2595 TLS, or RFC 2195 CRAM-MD5, or even the 
RFC 1734 AUTHENTICATE, you won't have passwords in the clear; if you use 
the RFC 1939 POP LIST command, you get the size of all the messages, and 
can choose not to use the POP RETR command to get the big ones..... you 
have to use the TOP command to get the start of the long messages, though, 
and that doesn't know where attachments begin....

>
> For home and casual use though POP is cool. You can only expect so much
> from it. And with the extensions it can do a lot.
>
> There must be a pure 'push' email protocol either in the works or done,
> is't there?

yes - it's called "SMTP". (sorry, the "pure push" was just too juicy a 
target :-)

              Harald