[MlMt] MailMate passed the CASA tier 2 security assessment (hurrah?)

[Pierre Igot]

On 9 Apr 2025, at 12:33, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 9 Apr 2025, at 17:13, Pierre Igot wrote:
>
>> First of all, I want to commend Benny on his efforts to deal with this and be as transparent as possible with us users. It cannot be easy.
>
> The mailing list is perhaps also my outlet for the frustrations involved ;)

And you’ve been remarkably polite about it :).

>
>> For what it’s worth, I currently have six accounts in MailMate, including one Fastmail account, one Apple iCloud account and one FREE Gmail account for personal use. (The other three accounts are part of a hosting service that I have for my web own domains.) I don’t mind having to deal with app-specific passwords, even if it’s a bit awkward, as long as the process is well documented somewhere.
>
> Just for the record, MailMate now supports OAuth for Fastmail as well.

Since setup is something that I do once and then promptly forget about (which is bad, I should take notes more systematically), it’s quite possible that, the last time around, I used OAuth for Fastmail without knowing it, by simply downloading the “profile” config file that they provide on the web site once you’re logged in.

>> For my main job, I also have two Exchange accounts and one Google Workspace account. My experience with systems admins in large organizations is that they’ll leave you alone as long as you find something that works for you that doesn’t trigger any alarm bells on their systems, which is not always easy. But there’s absolutely no point in trying to talk them into making any kind of an exception for you (and it’s definitely NOT a good idea to even try to “tell them that they were not doing their jobs properly”, as Benny suggested elsewhere — systems admins think they are gods and nobody is to ever question their rules and decisions).
>
> That last part is probably very good advice.

My experience is mostly with government or government-adjacent organizations, so things might be different in the private sector, but somehow, I don’t think that they are.

>
>> In other words, I do have one Google Workspace account that I need to access regularly, but I don’t need to access it via MailMate, which I only use for my free personal Gmail account.
>
> I'm glad there are other ways to “solve” problems with Gmail authentication, but my main concern is that I need to be able to provide a solution to any Gmail users who would like to continue using MailMate. And I do think those solutions exist.

Understood. I just wanted to share that I have been using MM for my free Gmail account for years and have not had an significant problems, possibly because I am not uncomfortable with slightly complex setup processes. In that respect, macOS Mail with its attempts to “guess” server settings for you before or instead of letting you enter them manually can be immensely frustrating, as far as I recall. I’ll take a slightly complex setup process that is clearly documented any day over pseudo-“smart” software like Mail that only works reliably in Apple’s very limited testing of real-world situations.

My view on all this is that people who want to use Google or Microsoft accounts provided by large organizations in MailMate should be prepared to experience some pain, and should know that it’s not the developer’s fault if things don’t necessarily work smoothly. My choice to use Outlook is mine, of course, but there might be others in a similar situation who think that they really cannot stomach Outlook. Personally, I don’t like it, but it’s still an order of magnitude better than having to use a webmail interface. I’ll take the pain of having to use Outlook over the pain of having to struggle to keep things working in MailMate in spite of all the hurdles that are not the fault of MailMate’s developer. Like I said, at least when I don’t want to be reachable for my main job, I just need to quit Outlook :).

Each individual’s mileage may vary, of course.

Pierre



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