[m4rtin]

I'm using Mail.app at work.
I have one account for work = POP and all is fine.
I have another account for my personal mail = IMAP. To check this personal account my password is needed so only I can check my personal mail, this works fine. I have set the prefernce in the Accounts/Advanced tab for 'Keep copies of messages for offline viewing:' to "Don't keep copies of any messages" so that when I quit mail, logout or restart the mail is not visible to anyone.
This seemed to work, when a subject line was clicked on a message came up stating "The message from SENDER <SENDER EMAIL> concerning �SUBJECT for user ACCOUNT� has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."
But just recently I noticed the mail is viewable even though the account is offline - even after a restart or logout or quit.

Re-selecting the same option in the prefs gives the following message: "You will be unable to search the entire text of messages in this account, and junk mail in this account will not be detected. Are you sure you want to change to �Don't keep copies of any messages�?"
but in fact the messages stay visible.

I want to keep my mail private so that in my absence (when mailbox is offline/no password entered) the mail cannot be read. I don't mind the subject lines plus sender details etc being visible.

Any ideas?

[Moose]

Originally posted by m4rtin:
I want to keep my mail private so that in my absence (when mailbox is offline/no password entered) the mail cannot be read. I don't mind the subject lines plus sender details etc being visible.

Any ideas?

Don't let other people use your account.

[CatOne]

Fast user switching, dude.

[m4rtin]

How do I stop them viewing my account when Mail is stubbornly keeping copies of the messages locally, it's not meant to...
Is there no way to get Mail to do what it's meant to do?

[Moose]

Originally posted by m4rtin:
How do I stop them viewing my account when Mail is stubbornly keeping copies of the messages locally, it's not meant to...
Is there no way to get Mail to do what it's meant to do?

How do we stop you from letting other people use your account if you stubbornly keep private personal information on a work machine?

Is there no way to get you do use the OS like it's meant to be used?

http://bugreporter.apple.com/

[Mithras]

I agree with m4rtin that it's a problem. I think it comes out of the fact, though, that the vast majority of people (including the Mail.app developers) look at this not as a "security" feature as you do, but as a time v. space tradeoff. Your set of requirements (it's okay if people can look at my mail, but only the subject lines, not the body) is pretty oddball, and definitely not something the developers will target.

I think the idea with the caching is to offer the feature by which Mail.app caches messages on disk, so that you can offline access to your messages. Users might not want to devote the disk space to that though, so you can ask Mail.app not to bother to cache.

That "no-caching" option is just the lack of a disk cache though, not a scrupulous purging of the memory cache of messages. The option is designed just to save on disk space, not to be a "security" feature.

Incidentally, does Mail.app still retain the messages if you quit & relaunch it? I'd bet those message bodies are just retained in memory, not on disk.
EDIT: Yep, just confirmed that Mail.app doesn't show the message if it's been quit and relaunched. So the option works just as I described: the choice is whether Mail.app should devote disk space to an offline cache, not whether it should instantly annhilate its memory of messages.

You should use the screensaver lock, or fast user switching as suggested above, if you want your account to be secure. Or if you really don't care about privacy otherwise, quit Mail when you walk away.

[Mithras]

One other thing: If you PREVIOUSLY had the option set to "keep", but have changed it to "don't keep", Mail.app does not go and delete the existing cache of messages -- it just doesn't retain copies of messages you receive henceforth.

If you want to delete an existing cache of messages:
1. quit Mail
2. go to ~/Library/Mail
3. open the folder corresponding to the account
4. select the mailbox you want to purge and control-click, select "Show Package Contents"
5. Delete the contents of the "Cached Messages" folder.

[m4rtin]

Thanks for your posts Mithras.

One thing though, initially my results were like yours i.e. quitting Mail and restarting not showing the messages, but a few days later I noticed that they were showing. Hence my original post.
Not sure why Moose is so upset by my questioning why Mail doesn't do what it says it will do - I was only 'stubbornly' leaving personal info on the machine because I was deceived by the software's problem/bug/callitwhatuwant. I do quit Mail when I walk away and that was secure enough til I found it was caching Mail against my wishes.

Multiple users is not an option as I cannot keep switching users every 5 mins to check my personal email.

[Mithras]

You could also change the permissions on the "CachedMessages" folder in your IMAP mailbox so that you can't write to it, which should prevent Mail from doing any caching.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by m4rtin:
Thanks for your posts Mithras.

One thing though, initially my results were like yours i.e. quitting Mail and restarting not showing the messages, but a few days later I noticed that they were showing. Hence my original post.
Not sure why Moose is so upset by my questioning why Mail doesn't do what it says it will do - I was only 'stubbornly' leaving personal info on the machine because I was deceived by the software's problem/bug/callitwhatuwant. I do quit Mail when I walk away and that was secure enough til I found it was caching Mail against my wishes.

Multiple users is not an option as I cannot keep switching users every 5 mins to check my personal email.

Why you're checking your personal mail every 5 minutes at work is another issue.

How about just not checking your personal mail in mail.app at all? Use webmail for .Mac or other email.

Expecting a password and lack of caching to hide this... you know I don't really consider it a bug... I consider your requirements to be a bit strange. A mail client (or at least Mail.app) isn't designed to be a "hey, let's have a way to keep my coworkers to see that I'm checking my personal mail in this, if they sit in my chair" type of app. There may be something like this, but Mail.app ain't it.

[m4rtin]

Originally posted by Mithras:
You could also change the permissions on the "CachedMessages" folder in your IMAP mailbox so that you can't write to it, which should prevent Mail from doing any caching.

Brilliant Mithras!

CatOne, I don't see why my requirements are so strange but not to worry cos Mithras' solution does exactly what I needed (expected originally).

[Moose]

Originally posted by m4rtin:
CatOne, I don't see why my requirements are so strange

Keeping private information out of the reach of others is WHY Mac OS X has multiple accounts, supports permissions, etc. If you don't trust these people with your personal mail, you shouldn't be reading your personal e-mail on a machine or account they can access.

You still haven't told us why other people need to use the same machine account you use. Until you do, I don't accept the premise of your question. Mail doesn't work in your situation because it is likely that fewer than 1% of Mac OS X users break the spirit of the multiple users system in the same way you do.

That's why I recommended you file a bug so that Apple can either fix it, or tell you why they're not going to. Changing permissions is an ugly hack. People who bitch about problems, perform ugly hackery to work around it, and then fail to put something about it in Radar hurt the platform.

[m4rtin]

Originally posted by Moose:
Keeping private information out of the reach of others is WHY Mac OS X has multiple accounts, supports permissions, etc. If you don't trust these people with your personal mail, you shouldn't be reading your personal e-mail on a machine or account they can access.

You still haven't told us why other people need to use the same machine account you use. Until you do, I don't accept the premise of your question. Mail doesn't work in your situation because it is likely that fewer than 1% of Mac OS X users break the spirit of the multiple users system in the same way you do.

That's why I recommended you file a bug so that Apple can either fix it, or tell you why they're not going to. Changing permissions is an ugly hack. People who bitch about problems, perform ugly hackery to work around it, and then fail to put something about it in Radar hurt the platform.

Moose,
Not sure why you got so upset. The options in the Mail.app prefs offer me what I want. The fact they don't do what they say they should do is a bug. I will report it, don't panic.
My discovery of this bug and the reason why I want to do what I want to do is not really an issue.
Yes, I check personal email at work. It's ok my boss knows and is cool.
I am the only user of my work machine but once I quit Mail and walk away from it, it is not my work machine - just a machine at my work.
Therefore, my selection of the preference not to store IMAP messages on the machine would be fine (if it worked).
Until the bug is fixed (or declared a non-bug and I am caught and shot for such anti-platform wtf behaviour) then ugly hack rules.
Not sure I bitched about the problem, I think I just asked for help on a forum. Chill Winston.

[Gavin]

Do you move the message to another folder after you look at it? Mail will make a local copy if you move it, no matter what the prefs say.

In the short run the workaround really is to use your own account and use fast user switching, which you should probably be doing anyway (which is why the moose is loose ). It doesn't take that long to pop the menu down and type your password, even on an old B&W G3 it takes less than 6 seconds (just timed it!).

You have to be running 10.3 - if you have 10.2 or lower then, yes, it is a major hassle.

[m4rtin]

Originally posted by Gavin:
Do you move the message to another folder after you look at it? Mail will make a local copy if you move it, no matter what the prefs say.

In the short run the workaround really is to use your own account and use fast user switching, which you should probably be doing anyway (which is why the moose is loose ). It doesn't take that long to pop the menu down and type your password, even on an old B&W G3 it takes less than 6 seconds (just timed it!).

You have to be running 10.3 - if you have 10.2 or lower then, yes, it is a major hassle.

I never move them on the work machine.

I prefer the ugly hack than the fast user switching to be honest, and I don't feel bad doing it either - so there Moose!