chombee wrote:
Hi,
I'm wondering about the privacy implications of using mutt. Say I'm
using it on my laptop (or any untrusted host, maybe a computer owned and
administrated by someone else) and if my laptop gets stolen I don't want
my email to be compromised in any way. I don't want a copy of my email
to be stored on my laptop, or accessible from it without typing my
password. So I use mutt, and I connect to my email account over IMAP
with SSL. I don't put my IMAP password in my muttrc file, instead I type
it every time I connect.
Just what exactly does mutt store on the laptop? Is the laptop safe as
soon as mutt is closed?
The header and message cache options seem like an obvious information
leak. Which is a shame, because they really speed things up! I suppose
a possibility is to encrypt a directory containing the mutt config and
cache files etc., and each time you check your email decrypt that
directory then launch mutt.
These are issues with just about every mail client I know of, not just
Mutt. It's also the sort of thing disk encryption and remote wipe
software were made for.
