Re: [Asrg] We don't need no stinkin IMAP or POP, was Adding a spam button to MUAs

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> Sat, 06 February 2010 20:08 UTC

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Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:09:21 -0000
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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
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Subject: Re: [Asrg] We don't need no stinkin IMAP or POP, was Adding a spam button to MUAs
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>> Their POP and IMAP servers have thousands of different names, one for
>> each hosting customer.
>
>They've already got the thousands of different names.  Adding a second 
>to the DNS provisioning mechanism won't be that hard.

In case it wasn't clear, each customer sets up his own DNS and CNAME.
This means that if the mail provider adds this feature, they have to
contact several thousand resellers and get them all to update their
DNS.  I would characterize that as hard.

> And it allows for having per-customer selections.

Heck, a header added by the MDA allows per-message selections.

>I still think it a more general solution than hacking the MTA/MDA.

Could you explain why?  It strikes me as kludgy and fragile:

* It depends on two mail pickup schemes which, while popular, are not
  universal

* It depends on the MUA remembering the path of each message, which it
  need not do now for POP.

* It depends on the POP or IMAP server having a known name, which it
  doesn't now.  For example if I'm using your POP server, I might have
  my own CNAME or A record pointing at it that you don't even know
  about.

R's,
John