[olug] OT: i r stoopyd

[William Langford]

On 7/21/2011 11:04 AM, Christopher Cashell wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 7:50 PM, Will Langford<unfies at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> It's keeping a cache of the headers, though... so... on start up you can
>> still see a bunch of subject / from / etc.
> Almost all e-mail clients that support IMAP do this.  If they don't
> cache headers, they're forced to pull down the header information for
> all of your e-mail every single time they connect to the mail server.
>  From a user experience standpoint, this becomes a disaster as soon as
> your mailbox has more than a few hundred e-mails in it, as there is a
> serious delay between starting the application and being able to view
> your mailbox.

Yeah, I realize the caching is necessary.  It being plainly visible on 
startup was slightly disconcerting.  I don't have anything to hide, but 
I also would like some privacy.  Annnddd.. yes, I have several very 
large inboxes to be working with so I know the cache is required :).

There's a "master password" enhancer plugin thing for thunderbird that 
requires the master password on start up before it even displays the 
main window.  I believe this will be an acceptable solution.

> If you really want it secured, I'd suggest doing what Dan Linder
> mentioned, and setup a TrueCrypt volume (or other encrypted space).
> Mount that, and put your Thunderbird profile/cache/etc there.  It'll
> add an extra step before you can start your e-mail, but it'll lock
> things down pretty well.  It'll also allow you to pull down and store
> full e-mails safely, which will improve performance and give you an
> additional e-mail backup in case of emergency.

I'll be debating the TrueCrypt style container for the profile 
directories.  While I don't mind hiding my email from work's eyes, doing 
a full encrypted container does seem a tad eye-brow rising to me.  "What 
else could he be hiding in there?" etc.

Shannon's suggestion of a USB key was my next alternative (without 
knowing that there was a repository of key-friendly apps out there, 
thanks Shannon!).

In regard to backups and such - my home box has full copies of the 
emails, and I'll be setting up an rsnapshot process to backup emails to 
a second server as well.

I believe I'll be fine with headers cached on my work machine, but if I 
need to -- I'll look into some kind of encrypted volume probably.

> Also, if security is a top concern, make sure you're using IMAPS.  GPG
> wouldn't hurt, either (there's a good Thunderbird plugin in Enigmail
> for it).
>


Both outgoing and incoming are both set to using SSL.  GPG and similarly 
encrypt-the-email-itself-for-transport are not a necessity at this 
time.  I was glad to see the Enigmail plugin being so easily and readily 
available though :)

-Will

PS:

Thanks for the help guys.  I don't think I've worried about an email 
program since the dial up days :D