Tails

#4 Updated by sajolida 2015-05-04 06:47:19

Actually, it’s not possible to preconfigure POP to not remove emails by default. The only things that can be preconfigured in Claws are the fields from the account assistant (and this though the account.tmpl file) :(

So we can’t apply the decision of yesterday’s meeting…

#6 Updated by intrigeri 2015-05-04 08:11:34

> I’m not sure whether we should still propose IMAP by default

Deleting email from the server in the default email client configuration of an amnesic live system feels like a recipe for disaster, and users shouting at us because they’ve lost their email. FWIW, during yesterday’s meeting a few people seemed to voice similar opinions, and I don’t remember anyone arguing that defaulting to POP that deletes messages on the server would be good.

> but I’m tired of that stuff…

/me sends lots of Club Mate and tickets for afternoons at the beach to sajolida.

> If no clear decision is taken in time for 1.4 then this could remain an open question for the future (until we get rid of Claws).

I’m personally (surprise!) in favor of forgetting this ticket as far as Claws Mail is concerned: the mitigation it would bring us would only apply to new users anyway. Still, it’s an entirely valid question for when we move to Icedove => IMO the next step is to research if we can have “POP3 without deleting messages on the server” by default in Icedove.

#9 Updated by intrigeri 2015-05-05 18:22:19

> Hey, but then the advantages of POP over IMAP on Icedove in terms of security are not that clear.

(In what follows, I’m assuming that the POP3 protocol doesn’t allow to send messages to the server — I hope I’m correct here.)

To me, the advantages in terms of security are clear: POP3 provides an additional layer of safety against software bugs or mis-configuration. E.g. say we carefully check that Icedove/Enigmail vs. IMAP + OpenPGP behaviour is currently safe, default settings can change in the future, bugs can be introduced, and as a result it can become unsafe without us noticing… potentially for years. I don’t think any such thing can happen with POP3.

Also, even careful checks can miss problems, as we’ve seen recently (it’s taken us many years to be reported the Claws Mail vs. IMAP + OpenPGP problem, and one of our top-notch contributors missed one of the main issues with Claws Mail usage of the Queue folder, even after many hours testing and investigating specifically this class of problems).

To sum up, “POP3 without deleting messages on the server” feels like both a future-proof and fool-proof default to me. But I’ve no idea if we can ask Icedove to default to that.

#14 Updated by kytv 2015-07-25 03:54:33

When I added Icedove, its localization addons, and Torbirdy to the Tails package list and built a new ISO, the settings defaulted to

  ✔ Leave messages on server
      ✔ for at most 14 days
      ✔ until I delete them

If this is acceptable, we already got this for free just by installing Icedove and Torbirdy.

#15 Updated by sajolida 2015-07-28 07:17:08

First of all, keep in mind that this ticket was proposed partly because Claws Mail was leaking emails in cleartext with IMAP and not with POP. I hope this is not the case with Enigmail in Icedove. Still, POP would probably provide a more reactive interface than IMAP even in Icedove.

I think that the default options that you saw are almost acceptable but can still lead to email deletion. For example, if you download everything, then emails older than 14 days are deleted from the server and if your persistence is badly configured you might loose them forever.

So the best would be to have by default:

✔ Leave messages on server
- for at most 14 days
- until I delete them

Hopefully, I guess that Icedove will be easier to preconfigure than Claws.

#16 Updated by intrigeri 2015-08-03 04:48:03

> Hopefully, I guess that Icedove will be easier to preconfigure than Claws.

For per-account settings, I have my doubts.

#17 Updated by intrigeri 2015-08-03 04:51:02

> So the best would be to have by default:

As written above, and as discussed at a monthly meeting already, I agree we should never ship a MUA that defaults to delete email from the remote server ⇒ if that’s too hard to achieve with Icedove as well, let’s stick with IMAP by default.

#22 Updated by anonym 2015-10-26 05:46:17

I think, also, that POP vs IMAP is a question of persistent ~/.icedove vs an amnesic one. POP is a pretty bad choice in an amnesic session, and the larger the inbox, the worse it is.

I think the following is worth considering, to get the best out of two worlds:

1. We make POP the default, since it’s safe.
2. We make the Icedove wrapper check if ~/.icedove is persistent. If not, then we make IMAP the default.

#24 Updated by sajolida 2015-10-26 08:50:23

So yes, I agree with anonym that we could do POP if downloading to persistence, and IMAP if downloading to RAM. But that sounds quite some more work that what we should commit to for a first implementation. I read the whole thread again, and of the two reasons that were provided, the one about reactivity is pretty much dead since Icedove has caching and the one about security probably boils down to being future-proof as pointed out by intrigeri in Feature #9303#note-9.

#25 Updated by Anonymous 2015-10-26 09:33:31

I also agree with anonym’s proposal: POP if ~/.icedove is persistent else IMAP.

#26 Updated by kytv 2015-10-26 12:46:53

Sounds good to me. It’d be very difficult to do this without https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17426 being addressed.

Anyone opposed to anonym’s suggestion?

#27 Updated by sajolida 2015-10-27 06:36:18

I’m fine with anonym’s suggestion. Do you think that’s realistic for Tails 1.9?

#28 Updated by kytv 2015-10-27 07:30:35

sajolida wrote:
> I’m fine with anonym’s suggestion. Do you think that’s realistic for Tails 1.9?

If allowing the default (POP3 vs IMAP) to be configurable in torbirdy (upstream ticket 17426) is done in time, yes.

#29 Updated by intrigeri 2015-10-27 11:01:48

> If making the default configurable in torbirdy (upstream ticket 17426) is done in time, yes.

Just curious: is there a plan to implement it ourselves if upstream doesn’t do so after some deadline we set?

#31 Updated by kytv 2015-11-04 09:27:02

Note: I removed the parent task because I received an error “parent task is invalid” when I tried to update this ticket.

#33 Updated by intrigeri 2015-11-05 02:39:24

I wonder if Torbirdy’s authors understood that what we’re asking them is not about the default their own account setup wizard should propose (in 1.9 we want to replace their wizard with Icedove’s one).

#36 Updated by sajolida 2015-11-06 01:41:16

Trying to update with parent task deleted again and added back.