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From: VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH>
Newsgroups: comp.mobile.android
Subject: Re: Android 11: App polling interval is not 15 minutes minimum?
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2024 14:50:29 -0600
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Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

> I really don't want notifications for spam thanks.

Almost every 2FA e-mail sent to me ends up moved by the mail server's
filtering into my Junk folder.  Nope, I cannot add them to a whitelist
or rule: from where the 2FA e-mail gets sent may not, and is often not,
the same as the site you were visiting (domains differ, the site is
contracting out the 2FA service), so I don't know who to add to a Safe
Senders whitelist (and not many e-mail providers have a Safe Sender
whitelist that is enforced before their spam filtering), and user
server-side rules are exercised AFTER server-side spam filtering.  I've
gotten dentist appointments dumped into the Junk folder.  Anyone sending
similar e-mails are often lumped together with other senders as bulk
mail that end up in the Junk folder.

I get very little spam.  I do get a lot of false positives dumped by the
mail server into the Junk folder.  My e-mail client can hide the Junk
folder until it has new messages when it jumps out to under the root
folder of the account to show me there are new messages.  Lets me
collapse some of the folder tree to let me see more accounts and their
folders without having to scroll.  For all those false positives moved
into the Junk folder by the server's filtering, and because IMAP IDLE
doesn't work on anything but the Inbox folder, I wouldn't know that the
2FA code arrived until the next scheduled poll.  2FA codes expire
sometimes after 15 minutes, but I've had some that expire in 5 minutes,
like for my bank login.  I had to reduce the poll interval down to 1
minute to ensure I saw the 2FA e-mail show up in the Junk folder, open
it, copy the code, and paste into the web form.  If I had a polling
interval of 15 minutes, I wouldn't notice the e-mail ended up in the
Junk folder until after the 2FA code already expired.

I get far more legit e-mails as false positives dumped into my Junk
folder than I get spam e-mails.  I protect my true e-mail address by
using an aliasing e-mail server (AnonAddy since Spamgourmet died) to
dole out aliased addresses to unknown or untrusted senders.  Even for
known senders, like my hardware store, I first give out an aliased
address.  About 6 months later, if the alias wasn't abused, I update an
account with my true e-mail address, but sometimes I just continue
forward with the alias address.  This is not an e-mail forwarding
service since replies can divulge your true e-mail address.  An aliasing
service not only forwards to your true e-mail address, but also strips
out all your e-mail provider's headers on a reply to make the reply
looked like it was sourced from the aliasing service, and the aliasing
service will try to strip out any signature content with your true
e-mail address (but I never use signatures).  Never trust anyone that
asks for your e-mail address.  Give them an alias instead.

Oh, and those "aliases" that some e-mail providers allow aren't really
aliases.  Prepending or appending some string to your username is super
easy to determine what is your real username.  Plus those "aliases" are
still using your real e-mail account to send replies.  Give out an
alias, see if it gets abused, and decide later whether to give your true
e-mail address, or keep using the alias.  If an alias gets abused,
disable or kill it.  No more shit comes through that alias.  No having
make yet another disposable e-mail account each time you want another
alias or kill one.

>> You should have your e-mail client configured to do polling.  If the
>> server supports IDLE, your client can get new messages in the Inbox very
>> quickly, but not in other folders.  For the other folders, polling gets
>> used.
> 
> You can probably use a combination of push on 1st class folders and 
> polling on 2nd class folders, I don't but it's a potentially useful 
> concept.

From what I've found out from both my e-mail client's author and from a
mail provider, IMAP IDLE only works on the Inbox folder.  There are no
other "1st class" folders on which IDLE applies.

>> To what minimum interval can you configure K9 to poll? 
> 
> 15 mins.

And why, for at least the Inbox folder, you need to use an e-mail
provider that supports IMAP IDLE.  I always considered less than 5
minutes to be abusive to the e-mail provider since it is difficult to
get new mails, and read them all within the 5-minute window unless they
were very short.  Typically I set the polling interval to 10 minutes.
15 minutes seems stretching it out too long.  Someone that sends you an
e-mail and expects a reply won't mind a 5-minute delay, but 15 minutes
to get their e-mail, the time to compose a reply, and perhaps they were
stuck with a 15-minute polling interval, too, could mean they don't get
a reply until 15 to 30 minutes later.

However, some of the K9 users bringing up the issue connect to their
employer's mail server, and it doesn't support IMAP IDLE.  One guy noted
that he is a freelancer, the job postings get sent via e-mail, and the
first freelancer to reply gets the job.  15 minutes is way too long to
wait.  He was losing money because of the newly Android imposed battery
saving 15-minute minimum polling interval, because others could reply
before him.  He had to use a company mail server, and they didn't
support IMAP IDLE, so polling was his only way to get those e-mails, and
those e-mails would arrive too late.