Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients
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I wonder whether this is intended / standard behavior or not - feedback welcome before I write a bug report.
I am checking my mail with several devices. For whatever reason one of those devices might be a PC running Vivaldi Mail POP3, the other devices access the same email with IMAP.
Expected behavior: When the POP3 device (Vivaldi Mail) downloads emails from the server (here: my vivaldi.net address) it should not mark those emails as read
Actual behavior: Once the POP3 client downloads the email, it marks the downloaded mails as read for the other IMAP clients. The only client where the email remains unread is the POP3 client.
Even if this was standard (haven't tested it with any other client) I think it's a pretty dangerous behavior - essentially it makes mixing POP3 and IMAP impossible for people like me who treat unread emails as the holy cows of email organization.
Usually on Win11 running Vivaldi Snapshot builds. Opinionated about working efficiently with email. Folders are evil | Mail workflow: receive, read, reply, mark as read, done.
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@WildEnte
Hi, I can verify this with a POP3 vivaldi.net account but not with a Gmail POP3 account.
I use another Vivaldi install with this Gmail account as IMAP.
So I guess it is a server side issue of vivaldi.net but not the client.Cheers, mib
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Similar success with reproducing and agree with @mib2berlin that this is a (Vivaldi) server side issue.
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@mib2berlin and @yojimbo274064400 thanks both - I have reported this as a vivaldi.net service issue and have been given the reference number 87229379861
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Ppafflick moved this topic from Mail on -
@WildEnte In theory we can change this behaviour, though making this change will of course affect all our users (some may even expect this behaviour?).
I'm curious though, why would you ever want to combine POP3 and IMAP on the same account?
System Administrator / Backend Developer
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@thomasp in my case because I test Vivaldi mail and hunt bugs
- I can imagine the usecase where someone accesses mail from different devices and uses a POP3 to download & poor-man's-Backup the imap emails (wanting to take them out of sync), and/or to regularly remove emails from the server in case space is low. Or they accidentally set up one vivaldi instance as POP3 because that's what they always did.Is this a high priority? I don't think so. Should it work like other services? Probably. I just think that if this happens, the potential for bad mood when suddenly all emails are marked as read is high
Usually on Win11 running Vivaldi Snapshot builds. Opinionated about working efficiently with email. Folders are evil | Mail workflow: receive, read, reply, mark as read, done.
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@WildEnte I ran a StartPage search on this (this particular thread was also in the results).
From what I found, using POP3 and IMAP simultaneously, apparently, isn't advisable.
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=70646
https://superuser.com/questions/667849/use-imap-and-pop3-at-the-same-account
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Why not make this a poll on Mastodon? https://social.vivaldi.net/@WildEnte/110849665742645417
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@thomasp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
@WildEnte In theory we can change this behaviour, though making this change will of course affect all our users (some may even expect this behaviour?).
AFAICS Dovecot's decision to implement POP3 such that it sets the message's IMAP Seen flag as default behaviour is a mistake that unnecessarily breaks the separation previously provided by the protocols — let the email server administrator decide whether to enable this non-standard behaviour for their users by setting
pop3_no_flag_updates=noOT: is there ever a good reason to have a configuration variable name with state, i.e.
pop3_no_flag_updateswhenpop3_flag_updateswould sufficeI'm curious though, why would you ever want to combine POP3 and IMAP on the same account?
Combined use I have seen involved POP3 client to maintain a local copy of received message with IMAP clients to manage mailboxes; similar scenario mentioned earlier by @WildEnte
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@thomasp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
@WildEnte In theory we can change this behaviour, though making this change will of course affect all our users (some may even expect this behaviour?).
I'm curious though, why would you ever want to combine POP3 and IMAP on the same account?
It's very possible that changing this, might cause issues for many users. There's apparently nothing wrong with leaving that setting as it is, so I would suggest not changing anything.
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@edwardp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
@thomasp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
@WildEnte In theory [we can change this behaviour] …
⋮It's very possible that changing this, might cause issues for many users. There's apparently nothing wrong with leaving that setting as it is, so I would suggest not changing anything.
If non-standard behaviour is acceptable then it should be documented / highlighted to users of POP3 service.
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@yojimbo274064400 said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
If non-standard behaviour is acceptable then it should be documented / highlighted to users of POP3 service.
The advice I found online, is that POP3 and IMAP should not be used interchangeably, use one or the other.
As for a POP3 client retrieving mail, the way it works (the standard), is once the messages are downloaded, they are deleted from the mail server. An IMAP client leaves them on the server, until the user deletes them.
@WildEnte said:
Expected behavior: When the POP3 device (Vivaldi Mail) downloads emails from the server (here: my vivaldi.net address) it should not mark those emails as read
This is correct. The POP3 client should not be marking downloaded POP3 messages as read, until they are read. This would sound like a bug in the client, not the mail server.
@WildEnte said:
Actual behavior: Once the POP3 client downloads the email, it marks the downloaded mails as read for the other IMAP clients. The only client where the email remains unread is the POP3 client.
I believe this is due to the fact that both POP3 and IMAP are being used interchangeably.
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@edwardp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
This would sound like a bug in the client, not the mail server
well, we have established above that ...
@yojimbo274064400 said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
Similar success with reproducing and agree with @mib2berlin that this is a (Vivaldi) server side issue.
@edwardp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
I believe this is due to the fact that both POP3 and IMAP are being used interchangeably.
From what I have read this is the clear recommendation, yes. But imagine someone just makes an error setting up, say, a new smartphone app and for whatever reason it defaults to POP3 instead of IMAP as you connect it to your Vivaldi account, and now all your currently unread mails become read.
Anyway, this is a total hypothetical fringe case ... I will await for my Mastodon poll to finish (24 votes are in - this is almost every internet user) and then we'll put this topic on the shelf where it belongs
Usually on Win11 running Vivaldi Snapshot builds. Opinionated about working efficiently with email. Folders are evil | Mail workflow: receive, read, reply, mark as read, done.
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"Mark as Read" should only be done if it was selected by user to be marked in mail client, but not by mail server after fetching a mail.
@WildEnte Had you activated in Einstellungen → Mail the "Automatisch als Gelesen markieren" oder does your issue happen without this option?
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@DoctorG can't check right now but I don't think I had mark as read automatically enabled because I need my mails unread until I decide otherwise, and I used a fresh profile for my test - unless the setting is a default, it wasn't active. Otherwise I agree with you, I consider this a bug - albeit an unimportant one because, as the majority of the internet showed in my poll (24 votes total), hardly anyone uses POP3 and noone uses a mixed setup of IMAP and POP3.
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Dovecot deemed there was enough importance / demand for such a feature that not only did they implement it as the expense of performance¹ but thought it important enough to be the default.
Vivaldi need to decide whether they want a standard's compliant POP3 server or not and if it is the latter then to document it is as such so their users are aware of it.
¹ “You can disable this (to get better performance) with pop3_no_flag_updates=yes”, source: Dovecot as a POP3 server — Dovecot documentation
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@yojimbo274064400 said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
Vivaldi need to decide whether they want a standard's compliant POP3 server or not and if it is the latter then to document it is as such so their users are aware of it.
That would not be a correct interpretation of the facts. There is no standard that defines how a server acting as both POP3 and IMAP server should operate. Thus Dovecot's default behaviour cannot be described as non-standard any more than it can be described as standard.
System Administrator / Backend Developer
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@WildEnte said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
@edwardp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
I believe this is due to the fact that both POP3 and IMAP are being used interchangeably.
From what I have read this is the clear recommendation, yes. But imagine someone just makes an error setting up, say, a new smartphone app and for whatever reason it defaults to POP3 instead of IMAP as you connect it to your Vivaldi account, and now all your currently unread mails become read.
Every mail client I've used over the years, whether on desktop or Android, offered the selection of POP3 or IMAP when manually adding an account to the client. If someone errs, they can simply hit the back key to back out of the account creation, or exit the window on desktop and start over again.
I use FairEmail on Android. I've had no issues with it and would find it difficult to make a mistake like the one you describe above.
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@thomasp said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
@yojimbo274064400 said in Email received via POP3 is marked as read for other IMAP clients:
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That would not be a correct interpretation of the facts. There is no standard that defines how a server acting as both POP3 and IMAP server should operate. Thus Dovecot's default behaviour cannot be described as non-standard any more than it can be described as standard.
But there are standards for the protocols involved and there can be no expectation that a POP3 RETR command would result in an IMAP Seen flag being set. Dovecot themselves alluded to this non-standard behaviour when they wrote the following (relevant text part highlighted :
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Flag changes
By default when a message is RETRed, Seen flag is added to it. POP3 itself doesn’t support flags, but if the mailbox is opened with IMAP (eg. from webmail) it’s shown as seen. You can disable this (to get better performance) with pop3_no_flag_updates=yes.
⋮FWIW I recall Dovecot did something similar with their migration for Gmail where POP3 DELE command did not result in the message being deleted from server
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Migration from Gmail to Dovecot
You can use dsync migration via IMAP protocol, but there are a few things different with Gmail compared to other IMAP servers. With Gmail when you delete a mail from POP3, the mail is only hidden from future POP3 sessions, but it’s still available via IMAP. If you wish to preserve this functionality, there’s a pop3_deleted_flag setting.
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