I used Pocomail for three years previously (and Barca for a while when they first released it), and I recently looked at "The Bat!", but I simply don't wish to live with what I consider the "crippled" HTML rendering along with the extremely limited support of IMAP mail accounts. Personally, with common security protections on my PC (and other PCs I use) I have not seen any security threat from an HTML message that wouldn't easily be handled by an Antivirus and/or Anti-Spyware program.
-J-Mac
1. Problems with HTML in Pocomail/Barca on forwards or replies are not intentional, ie. it's not to "increase security", it's due to a limited viewer/editor control used. Btw. AFAIK it is getting replaced.
2. I have seen antivirus programs fail recognizing security threats in html. No protection is 100%.
And I have no idea why these apps do not willingly support IMAP. Anyone know why IMAP is a problem with either Pocomail or The Bat!?
Not sure, my guess is that it's way more complex to implement, and way less people use it than the POP protocol.
All those apps are subject to allowing malware to use that path to spam people - I don't believe that's a valid concern. (Someone should point me to the last time that issue was recorded in the last five years. I cannot find any!)
Whether it's a valid or non-valid concern, depends on point of view. It certainly increases the security. Of course you can say that people shall patch their OS, always use latest up-to-date firewalls and antiviruses and antispywares and whatever, and you know what I do it, you do it, and few other people too, particularly those on this board and similar geek types. But try to see a majority user of those apps.
So IMHO it increases security (how much is another question, maybe it's just a very small increase in overall security, I don't know), but cutting down on functionality. Whether that's valid, depends on the user. You and I might hate it as we can secure our computers without having to sacrifice on functionality, but there might be others who sleep better thanks to it. (I have found several MAPI viruses discovered in 2004 and 2005 after some short search, though frankly I'm not an expert on that so I have no clue whether those threats would apply on what we are discussing.)
We are also speaking about future security. If IMAP has long history of past threats, would you now jump on it as a developer knowing that it was ok for last year or two, but not for the years before?
Anyway, I'd like to stress that I'm not supporting the "no IMAP" stance. I'm the "give me full powers, I decide" advocate.