nPop rulez! Is there anything similar for SSL?

[Jason Lee]

Ok I love nPop. It runs on my desktop, laptop, and pocket pc. There is no installer an it will run from a flash card or usb flash drive. The pocket pc and desktop versions will even use the same config file and read the same data files! (which are nice and plain text so notepad will read them in an emergency)

Now that my job has recently inforced SSL and also now that gmail is poppable but requires SSL, I'm in search of a new email program.

So in all your travesls about the internet have any of you stumbled across anything even similar to nPop that supports SSL?

I honestly use my pocket pc for my primary email device. I do not check my email on my home pc or my laptop. I use my ppc for all my personal email and most of my business email. So I like how i can archive my email with nPop. When the save box gets too big I just copy the savebox.dat to my email archive folder on my SD card and rename it with a date range. And it is still readable on my desktop or any pc for that matter unlike outlook email storage which requires outlook and lots of importing.

I guess what i want is an email program that runs on the desktop and pocket pc. Or i guess just an email program for my pocket pc that is not microsoft and saves my mail in a readable (ie. plain text) format.

I know, I'm a dreamer... :lol:

[humbletim]

I ended up using Stunnel to add SSL support. This works both on the desktop and the device (although on the device, I only was able to get secure POP to work with Gmail, but that was good enough for me).

The magic of port forwarding takes care of pretty much everything else (once configured), so when a connection is made to localhost:110 (normal POP port) -- it gets secured and then forwarded to pop.gmail.com:995 (SSL/secure POP port and server).

Remember -- in your POP settings, you would NOT enable SSL for this -- and instead simply set your POP server to localhost (and of course have stunnel running as described below).

For the Pocket PC

You can get a CE version of stunnel (ARM) from: http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/wince/stunnel.html . You'll also need a copy of the celib.dll from the same site (celib-3.13-dll-bin-all-platforms.tar.gz, you probably always want the "wince-arm-hpc-wce300" versions). You then want to create a text file on the desktop called something like "pop.lnk", with the following line (it will act as a shortcut on the device):

14#"\stunnel.exe" -c -d localhost:110 -r pop.gmail.com:995

Copy stunnel.exe, celib.dll, and pop.lnk to the root on your device (or adjust path above and put elsewhere) and simply click the pop.lnk to start forwarding. It brings up a nice, big, ugly window -- I just moved it out of the way. It can't be minimized!! (I have a windowless version, but I upgraded before completing; let me know if anyone wants to try it).

You should then be able to CHECK email via POP on localhost using your Inbox.

For the desktop

http://www.stunnel.org -- you'd need the latest stunnel.exe, libssl32.dll, and libeay32.dll, and a configuration file (all are on the download page there, here is a config).

sample config file for GMail (save this snippet as "stunnel.conf" and place in the directory you save the exe and dlls above):


client=yes

[pop3secure for gmail]
accept=110
connect=pop.gmail.com:995

[smtp secure for gmail]
accept=25
connect=smtp.gmail.com:465



Both POP and SMTP over SSL worked fine (from Outlook) on the desktop for me.

In theory (caution!) you could use some relaxed Stunnel and firewall security settings to allow others (yourself via GPRS, for example...) to tunnel in via your home desktop via standard POP/SMTP ports, automatically secured and forwarded over SSL to GMail... (don't do this -- you might as well run a local stunnel instead).

---------------------

Anyway, I know this sounds crazy, but it worked as an interim 2002 solution to enable POP over SSL, on a Pocket PC, including GMail.

Good luck!!
-Tim

Note: stunnel.conf files don't seem work at all with the WinCE version of Stunnel, so just create the shortcut for Pocket PCs as described earlier.

Note: PocketPC Outlook versions seem to have a bug with SMPT AUTH requests (not related to SSL???). If you are a developer, I have some logs documenting it.

[Jason Lee]

wow nice fix! :D So a gather that this will let you recieve from the PPC but not send? Bummer... I can use pocket inbox for that as is.. I just like nPop better. But it's really nice to know they have stunnel for PPC. I'm gonna have to play with that. :mrgreen: