On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 16:31 -0400, Matt Price wrote: --snip-- > ssh <me>@localhost -L 9143:<mailbox.server.name>:143 > > then I just point getmail to > port = 9143 > server = localhost > > and my mail gets picked up! But: I guess I don't really believe that > the mail is encrypted, since I don't understand how the connection to > <mailbox.server.name> is encrypted when I don't log in or anything. > Do other folks understand better how this works? Or (more to the > point) whether the packets sent by the mailserver are actually > encrypted before they reach my local box? You're right, your communication to the mail server is NOT, in fact, being encrypted. What's happening when you do the above is encrypting any information between your ssh client and the server that it is connecting to. In this case, localhost. So you're encrypting information that's going nowhere. (The above would be much more useful if you ran your own mail server on your home network and wanted to connect to it securely from a remote location.) What you're wanting to do is not possible without having a shell account on your ISP's machine. Though if your ISP doesn't offer secure access to your mail and WON'T offer secure access to your mail, I'd suggest that it's time to look for a new ISP. (One that won't be compromised any day now.) -- Alex Malinovich Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY! Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the pgp.net keyservers. Key ID: A6D24837
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