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Here is the difference between GMail and a self-hosted email system: when you delete messages over IMAP, they do not get deleted in GMail. "All Mail" keeps al

Here is the difference between GMail and a self-hosted email system: when you delete messages over IMAP, they do not get deleted in GMail. "All Mail" keeps all your mail, forever, unless you log in via the web interface and delete it manually. You could always use the web interface, but now encrypting your messages is much harder. These are the sort of design decisions that can have far-reaching implications. Google was not thinking about protecting its users from government surveillance when it designed GMail.

magicalist 13y ago
As others have noted elsewhere, that's not true: you can have it delete emails on delete, but you do have to turn that on yourself. It's not the default, and defaults matter, but it is an option that appears as soon as you click "enable IMAP" in gmail (go ahead and try it in your gmail settings). You'll have to read the options, yes, but considering the whole UX thing for gmail has been "never have to delete an email again", it's not an unmotivated default. Also, I hope your email client does secure deletes on local disk by default.
- betterunix 13y ago
  Frankly, I missed the option, and usually I am pretty good with noticing if the defaults are what I want. The only reason I even noticed that "delete" was not actually deleting mail was that I had to search through All Mail one day, and I noticed some messages that I was sure I deleted. What makes this worse is the completely counterintuitive nature of deleting messages from All Mail: they just come back. I suppose it should have occurred to me that this is a setting I can change, but considering the other oddities I have seen in GMail's IMAP support I just jumped to the assumption that it is another weird "feature." Really though, the point still stands: Google was not considering protecting its users from government surveillance to be a priority here. They probably had other reasons, maybe even well-justified reasons, for the defaults they chose, but those reasons only make sense in the context of their engineering requirements. "Also, I hope your email client does secure deletes on local disk by default." I do something better: whole disk encryption. Actually, since I use an SSD now, "securely deleting" anything is non-trivial; it is better to just negate the need for it by never storing plaintexts anywhere.
  - magicalist 13y ago
    However, the option is there, and you're a person who notices if the defaults are what you want but didn't read one of only three options presented to you when enabling IMAP, basically the only settings that were even important if you're not using web mail. It's possible that the options screen was different when you originally turned on IMAP, though. However, because of the historical lack of an "archive" IMAP function, it's still not clear that the default isn't the correct one for the average user, just like PGP on by default with private keys managed by the user wouldn't be the correct default because most users would be locked out of their own email within the week.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      The lack of an "archive" function is pretty easy to fix: create an "Archive" folder. That is basically what "All Mail" is, at least for me. The problem with this default is that it makes no sense. Most email clients already have an option to "delete" mail by moving it to the Trash folder (which Google has), and most users expect that deleting something from Trash means deleting it for good. I am just not seeing the use-case for someone wanting to "delete" a message from Trash or All Mail just to have the message reappear in All Mail (why on Earth would anyone want a message deleted from All Mail to come right back to All Mail?!).

magicalist 13y ago

As others have noted elsewhere, that's not true: you can have it delete emails on delete, but you do have to turn that on yourself. It's not the default, and defaults matter, but it is an option that appears as soon as you click "enable IMAP" in gmail (go ahead and try it in your gmail settings). You'll have to read the options, yes, but considering the whole UX thing for gmail has been "never have to delete an email again", it's not an unmotivated default. Also, I hope your email client does secure deletes on local disk by default.

betterunix 13y ago
Frankly, I missed the option, and usually I am pretty good with noticing if the defaults are what I want. The only reason I even noticed that "delete" was not actually deleting mail was that I had to search through All Mail one day, and I noticed some messages that I was sure I deleted. What makes this worse is the completely counterintuitive nature of deleting messages from All Mail: they just come back. I suppose it should have occurred to me that this is a setting I can change, but considering the other oddities I have seen in GMail's IMAP support I just jumped to the assumption that it is another weird "feature." Really though, the point still stands: Google was not considering protecting its users from government surveillance to be a priority here. They probably had other reasons, maybe even well-justified reasons, for the defaults they chose, but those reasons only make sense in the context of their engineering requirements. "Also, I hope your email client does secure deletes on local disk by default." I do something better: whole disk encryption. Actually, since I use an SSD now, "securely deleting" anything is non-trivial; it is better to just negate the need for it by never storing plaintexts anywhere.
- magicalist 13y ago
  However, the option is there, and you're a person who notices if the defaults are what you want but didn't read one of only three options presented to you when enabling IMAP, basically the only settings that were even important if you're not using web mail. It's possible that the options screen was different when you originally turned on IMAP, though. However, because of the historical lack of an "archive" IMAP function, it's still not clear that the default isn't the correct one for the average user, just like PGP on by default with private keys managed by the user wouldn't be the correct default because most users would be locked out of their own email within the week.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    The lack of an "archive" function is pretty easy to fix: create an "Archive" folder. That is basically what "All Mail" is, at least for me. The problem with this default is that it makes no sense. Most email clients already have an option to "delete" mail by moving it to the Trash folder (which Google has), and most users expect that deleting something from Trash means deleting it for good. I am just not seeing the use-case for someone wanting to "delete" a message from Trash or All Mail just to have the message reappear in All Mail (why on Earth would anyone want a message deleted from All Mail to come right back to All Mail?!).