[ale] Google IMAP problems

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2009, Andrew Grieser wrote:

> Mike,
>
> I don't think it's a speed issue. When it tries to connect, it simply 
> comes back with an error saying the SSL certificate signature is bad.
>
> Same error on both laptop and N810.
>
> Andrew

Heh, they had that problem for a while in the end when I finally decided 
to switch.  They had changed their provider for the certificate or 
something like that, I don't recall exactly.  My mail client would hang 
with an application-modal dialog when that happened.

There were numerous issues that caused me to move away:

  * Slow in managing the size of folders (labels) from IMAP,
  * The server would sometimes hang-up on my mail program, sometimes
    frequently, causing strange behavior.
  * The server would sometimes never answer a socket call, sometimes
    for hours on end.
  * The SSL certificate issue was the icing on the cake for me.

Anyway, there probably isn't much you can do about it.  For safety, many 
client programs will store the last-used certificate for the connection, 
and prompt when it changes.  I would hope all clients do that, but I'm not 
so optimistic.  Anyway, it's a great feature to have, and really Google is 
the at-fault party in making them appear so often.  There is nothing you 
can do client-side that I can think of without either acting as an SSL 
proxy (and using a locally-trusted, never-changed certificate) or patch 
the program so as not to confirm such things.

 	--- Mike