Author: James P. Roberts Date: To: exim-users, konrad Subject: Re: [Exim] A bit OT - apologies in advance!
<snip> > However, my client has a requirement for pop3 access for lusers to get
> their mail, and worse still he wants people to be able to share a
> mailbox, similar to the way BT and Demon do mailbox sharing: ie you
> login with you entire e-mail address as the user name, using a common
> password. The user then sees only the mail addressed to them, despite
> the fact that in reality those mails are mixed in amongst dozens of
> other people's mails. There is one admin user per mailbox who can read
> everyone's mail.
Konrad:
First, may I say "Ack!," since ANYONE could potentially read anyone else's
mail, whether admin or not (they would only need the victim's full email
address, which is obviously public information).
Second, you are talking about a POP3 service, which, unless you figure out
some way to rigorously enforce client settings, is going to result in a "first
come, first read" situation. The Admin won't be able to read stuff that users
have already pulled off the server! And if you choose a POP3 server that can
be set to prevent clients from deleting mail... Well, I hope you have a LOT
of disk space...
Since any user could easily set their own MUA client to delete messages from
the server upon download, there would be no way for the Admin to have any
confidence at all that they were seeing all the messages. And what if the
Admin accidentally deleted messages upon reading?!?! Oh my.
But, of course, the customer is ALWAYS right... ;)
My suggestion would be to set up separate luser mailboxes (which is easier
anyway), and then have Exim send copies of every incoming message to a central
Admin account. I believe there have been several discussions on the list
about how to do this. Check the archives.
Best of luck to you. I think you'll be needing it!
