Post Comment - Pipedot

Virtual Email (Score: 3, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-05-06 08:51 (#1DZ)

The in-site virtual email is, for the moment, not connected to the traditional SMTP/POP3/IMAP mail protocols of the Internet. Instead, it is a mechanism to allow users to send each other private messages without giving away their "real" email address. It also allows the system to send you a notice when, for example, you get a comment reply.

Although I did create a tie-in of the system to my "real" Dovecot/Postfix email server, I have left it disabled for now. Potential problems of such a system include:

Incomming Spam - real email addresses get lots of spam and, although my system piped the messages through SpamAssassin, some messages would still get through and cause some inconvenience
Outgoing Spam - controls and limits would need to be made to prevent users from sending spam and adding to the global spam problem
Heavyweight Service - Each user connected to IMAP creates a new Dovecot process. If several hundred users all set their mobile phone apps and desktop clients to use the IMAP service, my poor little mail server would experience some real resource limits.