[Alpine-info] Strange behaviour in deleting from Gmail

[Michael Dalling]

On 13 Dec 2009, at 06:07, M.RossARR wrote:


> I must wonder why not setup with a service like fastmail.fm - use

> their facility to essentially take mail from the bum servers to

> fastmail.fm IMAP servers?




> ...  I might sign up for gmail just to

> try out my suggestion - a test.


No need.  Settings for picking up POP3 mail from the Gmail server are included here:

<http://www.fastmail.fm/help/external_email_pop_links.html>

Presumably, Fastmail wouldn't list those, if they didn't know it worked.

But, unless I was misunderstanding, I think part of the objection to Gmail was "social" as opposed to "technological".  Google has specifically said it scans people's email in order to target them with advertisements.  (But I believe its spokesmen have also said it doesn't keep that information or attempt to link it to individuals.)  If the mail is picked up later by another server, Google's servers have still "seen" it (unless it's encrypted with PGP, which almost nothing is).

Of course, for the average domestic user there's an account at one's own ISP.  However, many people are reluctant to use their ISP accounts except for family and friends, because of the spam problem. Besides, most ISPs do not offer IMAP; many do not offer email over TLS/SSL (although that seems to be changing - because of public wireless access, I imagine); many seem to contract those services out; and paying for a service is no guarantee that your data won't be misused, anyway:

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/17/bt_phorm_lies/>

All sorts of considerations, but most of them are off-topic, I suppose.

-- 
Michael