[Unix-l] secure IMAP using Pine

[Eric Myers]

Pine is an e-mail client from the University of Washington which
runs on Windows and Unix (including Mac's in a Terminal window).

Pine can be used as an IMAP client to read mail from a central IMAP
server, such as the one run by CIS.  In normal operation IMAP is
served over an unsecured link, which means that your e-mail password
or other information could be sniffed from the network.

Pine can also use an encrypted link to the IMAP server if the server
supports it.  Ours does -- the encryption is provided using SSL, the
Secure Sockets Layer.  So it is a good idea to turn on the encryption
to keep your password and data safe.  (This is the same as reading
e-mail via webmail using https rather than http.)

Using IMAP to read e-mail with SSL is easy.  Go into the configuration
menu and change your inbox-path to "{imap.vassar.edu/ssl}INBOX" (it
probably looks just like this without the "/ssl").

Unfortunatly our outbound e-mial server does not seem to understand
encryption yet, so to send e-mail you then have to turn encryption off.
To do so change the configuration item "smtp-server" to read
"smtp.vassar.edu/notls" (TLS is a newer name for SSL).


        -Eric Myers



-- 
Eric Myers	<myers at vassar.edu>			Einstein at Home
Assistant Professor of Physics - Vassar College 
http://noether.vassar.edu/~myers/	      Tel: +1 845-437-7351 
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