362229 - IMAP Junk Handling: Add headers to IMAP messages to keep multiple clients in sync

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement, P5)

Description

[David]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8

Take 2 locations of Eudora (IMAP).

Have them both on at the same time, such as home box still online while at the office.

Home decides MSG123 is Junk, and moves it it junk.
User at the office can not find message, looks in junk.
There it is....he unjunks it.

Home, seeing it in IN or such, junks it again....
User at office wonders WTH did it go....

Solution? A X-tag added when you unjunk maybe?


Reproducible: Always




Related perhaps to 359263

Comment 1

[David]

> Home decides MSG123 is Junk, and moves it it junk.
Make That:
   ...moves it TO junk...

[Someday I'll figure out how to go back & edit my own submission...]

Comment 2

[Matt Dudziak]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US;
> rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US;
> rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8
> 
> Take 2 locations of Eudora (IMAP).
> 
> Have them both on at the same time, such as home box still online while at the
> office.
> 
> Home decides MSG123 is Junk, and moves it it junk.
> User at the office can not find message, looks in junk.
> There it is....he unjunks it.
> 
> Home, seeing it in IN or such, junks it again....
> User at office wonders WTH did it go....
> 
> Solution? A X-tag added when you unjunk maybe?
> 
> 
> Reproducible: Always
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Related perhaps to 359263
> 


An interesting idea to be sure... Would also help with keeping track of messages on an IMAP server that does not support UIDPLUS. This special header could be used to store all sorts of information, such as a Junk 'score' like Eudora uses (if we decide to assign 'scores' in Penelope), and as you say, indicate that the message has been Not-Junked by another client.

I do foresee a few problems, however, though nothing show-stopping:

1) Spammers could quickly adapt to this header, including it in their spam, tricking Penelope into thinking a messages is not junk. Solution would be to give the user some way to assign a unique 'phrase' to be included in this header. A spammer would be unlikely to be able to 'guess' this phrase.

2) The IMAP protocol does not provide any way to 'add a header' to a message. The IMAP 'Annotate' extension would be perfect for this type of thing, but seeing as many IMAP servers still do not support UIDPLUS, I suspect it will take many years for ANNOTATE to become common. The only solution that I see that will work with all IMAP servers is for the client to download the entire message, make changes to the message, then push (append) the entire message back up to the IMAP server. Unfortunately, this would be a problem for servers that DO support UIDLPLUS as the message would now have a new UID. This would also be a problem for users on a slow link as each and every not-junked message would need to take a full round-trip between client and server...


Sure there are some technical issues to iron out, but I think this type of thing would be quite helpful, not to mention COOL. Personally I would like to see FILTERS have the ability to add user-defined headers to IMAP messages as well.


Note: This bug is marked as depending on bug # 359263. I do not see any dependence, so I am removing that dependence. If you think it depends on 359263, please explain why. Thanks. Also, changing the summary.

Matt

Comment 3

[David]

> I do foresee a few problems, however, though nothing show-stopping:
> 
> 1) Spammers could quickly adapt to this header, including it in their spam,
> tricking Penelope into thinking a messages is not junk. Solution would be to
> give the user some way to assign a unique 'phrase' to be included in this
> header. A spammer would be unlikely to be able to 'guess' this phrase.


Agreed; not hard to make hard-to-forge. AND a spammer must REALLY be after you to craft spam set just to pass this hurdle..

 
> 2) The IMAP protocol does not provide any way to 'add a header' to a message.

"The nice thing about standards in this..."
[Dale has muttered similar things in the past re IMAP servers..]

> Sure there are some technical issues to iron out, but I think this type of
> thing would be quite helpful, not to mention COOL. Personally I would like to
> see FILTERS have the ability to add user-defined headers to IMAP messages as
> well.

I see this as a potential big plus.

Think: Centralized spam-weighing plus localized decisions.
Your home box has junk processing tools. Your laptop shows you some of those grades of messages, and your phone is FAR pickier...



> Note: This bug is marked as depending on bug # 359263. I do not see any
> dependence, so I am removing that dependence. If you think it depends on
> 359263, please explain why. 

More a "might have some effect on" post-Junked filtering; potential for another kind of looping...

Comment 4

[David]

Further somewhat related thought/observation....

TBird has a "move Junked Message to Junk folder option, al-la Eudora.

It does not seem to "move message back if manually marked "NOT Junk" as Eudora does.

Comment 5

[Matt Dudziak]

Assigning to Thunderbird as this is not unique to Penelope.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rkent, is this a dupe of bug (don't remember #) where something similar was discussed about adding headers info about junk stats?