[Users] Webmail support in Claws Mail

[alb348 at gmail.com]

On 2012-01-30 12:18, Christian Hesse wrote:
> alb348 at gmail.com on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:10:15 +0100:
>> Hi
>>
>> could Claws Mail access webmail accounts *as webmail*?
>> What I mean is that, in addition to using the POP3/IMAP protocols to
>> retrieve and manage your mail locally, you would also have 'links',
>> within Claws Mail, to those webmail accounts (possibly, with
>> notifications for new mail); by clicking on those links, the relevant
>> webmail account would open *as webmail* (HTML and all), without the user
>> having to enter username and password (which were previously provided
>> and have been stored). This could be accomplished either via HTML
>> support provided by Claws Mail, or by opening the webmail account via an
>> external browser (feeding the username and the password to the browser,
>> so that the webmail account opens right away, without asking anything).
>> This solution (already implemented in Thuderbird's Webmail add-on) is
>> very useful if you have many accounts, and saves a lot of time.
>> Thunderbird's implementation works great.
>> I am proposing this as a new feature in Claws Mail.
> Does this bring any benefits?
> I do not think it make any sense to read *mails* in a browser instead of a
> *mail* client.
>
It does bring a major benefit in terms of privacy: your IP address is 
masked when you send an email directly from the webmail (although not 
all webmails provide this courtesy), whereas an email sent via SMTP 
*always* contains the IP address of the sender.
Try sending two email from the same Google account, one via the webmail, 
the other via your email client. In the first case, the privacy of your 
IP address is protected, and there is no telling where you are 
physically located at the moment of sending the enmail, whereas in the 
second case your IP address is disclosed, so everyone can know where you 
are geographically located at that moment. Just think of the possible 
implications. I will mention only one: people will know that you are 
away on vacation, simply by the fact that your IP address tells you.
Now, in case you are thinking "you must be really paranaoid, because 
people do not normally go and reverse check every IP address of each 
email to find the location", let me tell you something else: there are 
tools (a Thunderbird add-on is readily available) that do this check for 
you automatically, for each email, so that the the geographical 
information at the top of the email.
You may call me paranoid, but the thought that everyone can easily know 
that this weeked I am here or there, and that on that date I was in that 
city, is a rather disturbing thought, which flatly violates any privacy 
expectation.
Of course, NSA and similar agencies can easily find out about your 
whereabouts anyway. But what I was talking about is virtually anyone of 
your contacts (e.g. hundreds of people on the mailing list you suscribe 
to...)

I hope this clarification makes a convincing case for the usefulness of 
what I proposed.

If Claws Mail aims to be the best email clients (and it certainly has 
all the makings for it), this privacy consideration should not be just 
ignored.