Re: [Tails-testers] 2.0~rc1

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Author: anonym
Date:  
To: Tails list for early testers
CC: exit-1, tails-icedove
Subject: Re: [Tails-testers] 2.0~rc1
sajolida:
> exit-1:
>> On 2016-01-15 10:40, sajolida wrote:
>>> exit-1:
>>> But we'd be happy to see if we can maybe solve the reasons that
>>> prevented you from switching to Icedove.
>>
>> Thanks Sajolida
>> Here's a few of the main reasons Icedove is not for me at the moment:
>>
>> * 'Fetch headers only' doesn't work - blank download means retrieving
>> the message from the server
>
> I see a "Fetch headers only" advertised in Account Settings → Server
> Settings. If it doesn't fetch the headers only then maybe this is a bug
> and would be worth investigating, reporting, and fixing. What exactly
> happens when this option is selected? I'm not sure to understand what
> you mean by "blank download".


Hypothesis: it could also be a security feature implemented by TorBirdy.

With the fetch headers option enabled I'm quite sure that selecting a
message that you only have the header for will trigger a download of the
full message. This is an info leak of your "usage pattern" to the mail
server, e.g. they can guess how much time you spend on each message,
which messages that are never read, how long you spend on dealing with
email and so on. Batch downloading all messages at the same time
mitigates this leak.

>> * There's no download message size limiter - good when data restrictions
>> need considering
>
> In Account Settings → Disk Space I see an option "To save disk space, do
> not download messages larger than [ ] KB". Did you try this? Does it do
> something else than what you expect?


Not that this option (and probably also some similar option about not
downloading attachments) will leak similar info as above since the mail
server then can see when you download these messages manually.

Cheers!