Re: [apps-discuss] Spam reporting over IMAP

"John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Tue, 10 January 2012 01:47 UTC

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Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:47:26 -0000
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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
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Subject: Re: [apps-discuss] Spam reporting over IMAP
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I agree this draft needs a lot of work, but for the purposes of
argument, I'm assuming it gets rewritten to be a reasonable spec,
removing irrelevant stuff like the speculation about spam aggregation
services.  This is basically a way to provide a spam button in MUAs
that works like the spam button in web mail, for systems that are
prepared to handle user spam reports.  It's something we need, for
reasons that will shortly become apparent.

> I'm sure many people would like to see something like SREP, but IMAP
> is absolutely the wrong place to put it.  IMAP servers store messages.
> An IMAP server doesn't decide whether something is spam, and is in no
> way capable of doing anything about it.

That may be the way your IMAP server works, but it is not the way
everyone's IMAP servers work.  

AOL provides IMAP access to their mail system.  Each user has a folder
called Spam.  Moving a message into the Spam folder is the equivalent
of pushing the spam button in web mail.  Gmail also provides IMAP
access.  Their system is a little peculiar because of the way they map
message tags to IMAP folders, but there's a folder called Gmail/Spam
which works the same way.  This is, needless to say, a gross kludge,
but until there's some better way to handle spam reporting in IMAP
clients, it's what people will do. 

Don't take my word for it -- sign up for a free account at either or
both, and try it out.

> SPAM filtering happens further up the delivery chain, usually within
> the MDA, or a preceding MTA, ...

Really, it's a bad idea to assume that everyone's mail software works
the way that yours does.

R's,
John