@mb: Because Gmail can't use IMAP to fetch from the .mil acount?

markadm

@benbronco: What you've linked to sounds to me like the exact opposite of what Dakota wants to do. The instructions you linked show how to access the Gmail server with your own client.

What I got from his message, Dakota wants to use Gmail's interface to access another mail server.

Original Post

"My solution for about a year has been to POP3 my Army email account (firstname.lastname@us.army.mil) to my GMail and it worked wonderfully-easy to search and no file size problems."

Why can't you just keep using this system, but replacing the POP information with the IMAP information? You'd still have to log in every so often, but at least you still get your messages.

mb

@benbronco: "The setup is pretty straight forward. Select the FOrward Pop/IMAP settings in Gmail and choose the IMAP radio button. Gmail provides step by step instructions for various email readers"

Good pointers, but from the message, it sounds like Dakota1775 wants to just point his Gmail client at the Army.mil mail system. I don't know if that's the same thing the help article lists. (It looks like configuration for clients to access GMail's mail store, not for GMail interface to access a remote mail store.)

mb

If not forwarding options are available on the Army side of things, I know of no other way than to use Thunderbird.

Set up both accounts (Army & Gmail) to connect via IMAP in Thunderbird. From there it's just select-all, drag-n-drop from one account to the other. Not too more labor-intensive than what you're doing now.

You could also try POPFile - it's an IMAP-capable anti-spam proxy that can also do alot more, I think it might even be able to forward all your Army email to your Gmail (but don't quote me) via a filter. The downside is that it has to always be running and connected to do its job (which the Army might not like). Just a thought?

G0lluM

Assuming that:
1. You're using Outlook to check your army.mil account, and
2. You can save Outlook mail rules to the mail server,

I would create a new Outlook rule which:
1. Forwards every incoming email to a specified address (your Gmail account)
2. Deletes the message out of your Army.mil account after sending it to Gmail.

It should be possible to set up other mail clients to do the same thing.

Ideally, you would be able to specify your Army.mil IMAP account as a new Gmail store. Then you could just use GMail as your Army email client.

mb

i assume the army's mail server doesn't offer mail forwarding- in which case you can just configure your army mail to fwd all messages to your gmail.

aviL

The setup is pretty straight forward. Select the FOrward Pop/IMAP settings in Gmail and choose the IMAP radio button. Gmail provides step by step instructions for various email readers

[mail.google.com]

benbronco

I did this last nite. The gmail instructions found on the gmail settings tab is pretty straight forward.

[mail.google.com]

benbronco

@G0lluM: Ah...now I understand your comment. I just checked and you are correct that gmail only retrieves mail via POP3. My mistake. As for why the intermediate account, it was so when he deleted email from the .mil account, it was deleted from the intermediate account (IMAP's two-way communication) but not deleted from the final gmail account. Moot since gmail only gets mail via POP3.

dukeisno1

I'm in the exact same boat as Dakota1775. The Army's issue is with supplying your username and password to a third party (in this case, Google) so that the third party can download and store your email for you. The Army is limiting outside access to IMAP over SSL and it has to be directly accessed by an email client or whatever, not by a third party organization that will be storing your login credentials.

I haven't been able to think of a good solution yet...

j.p.doherty

@j.p.doherty: I also agree. I think our friend in the Army would probably get in trouble for this.

G0lluM

@dukeisno1: Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if I'm reading correctly how do you set the intermediate Gmail account to retrieve via IMAP? I thought Gmail could only do POP3 retrieval from other accounts. And if he COULD do that (go from gmail straight to .mil via IMAP) why would the intermediate gmail even be necessary?

G0lluM

@englishman: National secrets shouldn't be kept or exchanged over unclassified networks. We have classified networks for that.

j.p.doherty

@craigsauer: Also, that might be why they are switching to only imap, so that the mail is only on their servers, not insecured servers/laptops all around the world.

Pengman

@DAHCHEET: Yes, it's not pretty and it is doing double the work, but it meets his requirements: 1) getting email off the .mil account using IMAP, 2) allowing him to delete the email from his .mil account, 3) keeping his deleted .mil email in a web-based gmail account.
@G0LLUM: I don't understand your comment. I'm suggesting the intermediate account imap from the .mil account. Then the intermediate account forwards (it's a setting) all email to a different gmail account. The forwarding doesn't use imap if that's your concern.

dukeisno1

@dukeisno1: I don't think you can IMAP from Gmail, that's the main issue. Gmail can be an IMAP server, but not a client. Unless I'm wrong...

G0lluM

Addressing a separate issue: Could our Army friend get in trouble for letting Google have access to his (the Army's) emails? I work for a multinational corporation that has very strict rules about putting sensitive company data (i.e. all those powerpoints...) in another company's care; wouldn't the Army be similarly concerned? My company also has strict rules about how long I can keep emails, which may be behind the Army's 100 MB limit. I'd love to abandon Outlook and manage my company email with Gmail, but I'd probably get fired if I did it.

craigsauer

Does anyone else see this as a major security hole in our defense it infrastructure? Sure it's inconvenient to have to always use an army computer to check the email, but this is better than allowing our national secrets chance to escape due to the weakness of an army senior officer's password.

englishman

@dukeisno1: That would just be doing double the work. The idea is getting the IMAP mail from the .mil account to his GMail regardless of whether or not the original copy stays on his .mil account (he clears it out once a week anyway).

Currently there's no solution through GMail or Google. I have heard of services that will forward your IMAP mail to other e-mail addresses but 1) they usually charge something 2) you have to give them your account information to do so and I don't see the government approving that. Some of the solutions above are probably the best but require you to have a program (Outlook/Thunderbird) open in order to get the messages forwarded or moved. Keep in mind, though, that if you decide to add GMail's IMAP to Outlook/Thunderbird so you can drag and drop your e-mail across it will want to load all the e-mails from GMail the first time and will likely take a good amount of time.

Good luck!

DahCheet

Can you use an intermediate gmail account? Have your intermediate account get the email via IMAP from the .mil account. Also have the intermediate account forward all incoming messages to the user's primary gmail account. That way when messages are deleted from the .mil account, they still reside on the primary gmail account.

dukeisno1

Oh, sorry. After going back and re-reading and some investigation it seems that getting gmail to access the IMAP is step one, and I was looking at step 2

Sorry about that

JoeLake

I may be mistaken, but I believe the issue here is not necessarily getting to the email, but keeping them archived such that it does not exceed his 100 meg limit.
To restate, when he was using the pop3 it would actually copy over the email to his gmail account, thus making an independent copy, so when he went into his mil.army account and deleted them he still had those emails available for reference in his gmail account.
I believe the big "nice-ness" of IMAP is that you have one copy and no matter what you do to it on one machine, the same is applied to it on the other. So when he deletes them on his army account they would no longer be availabe on the gmail account.
Not to put words in his mouth, but I believe he wants to use GMAILs "fetcher" capability for his IMAP account. Unfortunately, at this time GMAIL only supports POP accounts for this.
In order to help, I believe we actually need more information on what capabilities does he have through the army.

JoeLake

@mb: Yeah, thats what I thought too.

I have been trying to do this myself to no avail. So, the simple question is: Does GMail let you imap TO gmail FROM your other mail. (Essentially you would be using GMail as your imap client.)

MorphiusSys

Use Outlook, to configure IMAP for the .Mil Account as you did for your GMAIL. If you want, you can then move the messages from the .Mil Inbox to GMAIL Folders and it will sync with GMAIL server and you will always have access to all your emails.

TheConstantGardner

As an Army IT employee I can vouch for there being no classified material on normal NIPR-net accounts. SIPR-net carries stuff up to the Secret level. The Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS) handles Top Secret and higher. The Army and DoD already use CAC (common access cards) for logging on to computers. This uses PKI so all email can be encrypted and/or digitally signed.
Now as for another matter it is against policy to forward Army specific email to commercial accounts.

J

JeffinVA

@dandoze: But I think that would violate the Army's guidelines on connectivity, if as j.p.doherty stated above, you cannot provide your login/password combo to a third party or organization.

I know it would be his own hosting solution which he's paying for in your scenario above, but the data would still be residing on an unsecured network.

That said, might be a nice solution for us civilians in similar need! Thanks!

G0lluM

Given this individual's situation, I would think that any Thunderbird solution would best be serviced by Thunderbird Portable (portableapps.com). This would let you buy your own thumb drive & run the app entirely from there. Plug it in to any computer -- internetted or not -- and have access to everything.

kevish

Here is one solution for you, but it does not use Gmail. Many web hosting companies provide webmail with their hosting packages and if they do so with a package called HORDE [www.horde.org] you can use that to pull mail from any POP/IMAP accounts. Just like the POP-only feature of gmail, but it does IMAP also. The screen shots on that link will show you what the interface is like. This would mean switching to a new primary location for checking/reading email, but Horde is a really nice package so it's not a bad option. You could have it grab your gmail via POP and it would all be in one place. Many web hosts that offer horde are super cheap also. For example, I use HostGator [www.hostgator.com] (I swear I'm not trying to advertise for them) and they give 350gb of disk space for $5 per month. If you _really_ want to stay with gmail as your primary mailbox, you could then use the Gmail feature to POP it from the Horde host to Gmail, but that would be a bit too sketchy a solution for my personal taste, I assume others would agree. Also, the Horde IMAP fetch feature might only trigger when you login into Horde, so your gov IMAP mail might not be there automatically POP it off to Gmail if you tried to do the two-step process to stay in gmail.

dandoze

@Dakota1775:

To sum up: you want Gmail to act as an IMAP client, automatically download army.mil email to Gmail; perhaps it would be a nice bonus to delete the army.mil email automatically as well.

As others have pointed out, it Gmail's "Get mail from other accounts" supports only POP3, not IMAP; if army.mil won't automatically forward email to your Gmail account, it sounds like you will need some third-party software to do the intermediate work. It sounds like using an interactive program like Thunderbird or another IMAP client is out.

There may be free or pay services to do such a thing, which dancheet mentioned; I'll admit to no familiarity with them.

What should work, however---in fact, what some of those services might do---is fetchmail. It's almost certainly not as easy to set up as some of those services must be, and does require a UNIX server on which it may run, but should do almost exactly what you want.

Come to think of it, this is something that could be very useful for my institutional email as well. I'll look into it more. If you have access to a UNIX server of some kind on which fetchmail may run, drop me a line---I may have made some progress.

Hope that's some mild help,
Christian Jones

chjones

Is this really how secure our military communications are?

An army officer can simply download all his military e-mail to his gmail account? Are you kidding me? I realize that this guy may not exactly be receiving strategic operations about the air strike occurring tomorrow via this account, but seriously... there is hopefully a REASON the Army is switching to IMAP, and hopefully a part of that reason is to stop allowing POP access.

I love this... "The Army is now doing away with POP3 (supposedly a security concern) and will only support IMAP starting next week some time." Supposedly a concern? That's a pretty big concern dude! The fact you can then do whatever you want with that e-mail once it is out of your .mil account and into your gmail, and the army knows none the wiser, is about as insecure as it gets! What kind of genius is overseeing this awesome military communication platform?

I lose a little more faith each day, but today it took a big hit!

bkpatt

@j.p.doherty: So Gmail's out altogether then, case closed. And so would any other web-based potential solution.

It looks like a laptop or hand-held device would be the only sanctioned mobile means of retrieving ones email.

G0lluM

If I were still in the Army, I would not want to forward/import my email to a public mail server. ***You are compromising security which could put your unit, your life and/or your career in serious jeopardy!***

Instead I would speak to someone at DOIM about providing an alternative secure mail server or increasing the size of your inbox.

mrmuskrat

The Army on Feb. 1 began blocking the forwarding of AKO (the Army's web-based email service) email to commercial email accounts like Yahoo! and Gmail. It's an effort to prevent access to account passwords, which are sometimes used, I am told, for certain authentication procedures in forwarding email. I'm no expert, I just happened to read the official message this week.

jeremyo

Beginning Feb. 1, the Army is blocking the forwarding of e-mail from its AKO (web-based email service) servers to commercial email services like Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, and others. It's a concerted effort to ensure that passwords, which are sometimes required for forwarding authentication and such, are not compromised. I'm no expert, I just read the recently released message.

jeremyo

Even if you do get this to work, you are defeating the whole point the Army Security team is trying to stop. The unclassified network you are on is called NIPRNET, and while it interacts with the Internet, as in there are hook in's and that is how you are able to get into the internet, they go through all the work and money to keep only their communication on their proprietary/closed network. Eliminating any chance to "ease drop" in on open communications.

This is certainly not legal, and you did at some point agree to their terms. Before you question, "why can I get access to OWA mail from home," the military has deemed the ssl encryption good enough, but I would seriously doubt they have done the same for gmail,(especially considering you are storing data at google) and without explicit written guidance saying it was allowed, you are breaking the law. My suggestion, use outlook, save everything to a pst, and when you want to check recent mail from home, use owa.

darkdantae

I know under "Settings>Accounts>Get mail from other accounts:" you can add additional email accounts and use GMail as client. I haven't used it myself so I couldn't tell you how well it works or if it will do exactly what you are looking for. But it's worth a shot.

socialSTD

I concur with the comments above that there are likely "good" reasons why military mail should stay on military servers.

While national security concerns might not apply in this particular case, I think that there are other IP or "general data security hygiene" reasons that the powers that be would frown on such email migration.

In other words -- it's probably a bad idea to pursue a workaround, and you might want to consider just changing your email habits. (Get in the habit of detaching attachments, and/or deleting mail quicker than you normally do. Maybe set up some rules on the .mil server to auto-delete crap you regularly receive but don't actually need, etc., etc., etc.)

However, if you were thinking about this in a hypothetical sense (if I were to do this, how would I...), a couple of ideas:

1. Assuming automation is preferable, and you're PC based, I think something could be cooked up using cygwin ports of fetchmail, procmail, and some small mailserver, to fetch-and-foward to gmail.

2. If you're an Outlook user, and were willing to settle for "run on a click of a button", VBA code could be cooked up to move via IMAP messages you select from the .mil account to gmail (the solution I use for a somewhat analogous situation). Using VBScript, I imagine you could write a macro that runs automatically on receipt of new mail...but that's something I haven't actually tried.

3. If you don't want to write code, but use a client like Outlook or Thunderbird... you could start thinking of your .mil account as a "brand new mail" repository, and your gmail account as an archive. Allow the brand-spanking-new mail to live on the .mil address. After reading it, if it's something worth saving, drag it over to a Gmail folder (using Gmail's IMAP funcitonality).

MikeTheActuary

Dandoze's comment was pretty much what I was going to suggest. Use a second, temporary email (that you set up basically once) with a secure password *different* from your .mil password, such as Horde. From there, IMAP your .mil email into Horde. From here, you can either forward or POP your email into GMail.

If security is a concern, make sure that it is all being done with secure servers! The default GMail login is not secure -- be sure you use [mail.google.com] .

tigerhawkvok

THIS IS AGAINST ARMY AND DOD POLICY!!! STOP IT!!

Don't believe me? Check Army Regulation 25-2, where it explicitly says "Auto-forwarding of official mail to non-official accounts or devices is prohibited." [Para 4-20,f,6]

I'm an Information Security Manager for the Army. Bottom line, this is a bad idea, against regulation and plain irresponsible.

If you or anyone else is doing this, STOP. Delete your Google account (or Yahoo or whatever) and start a new one. (and that will not even get rid of that data).

Trust me, there have been several hacks disclosed that allow hackers access to your GMail and no doubt there will be others... AND no doubt there are others that have NOT been disclosed.

Manage your inbox responsibly. This blog and Unclutterer have posted several tips on how to do that. I too bump against that limit all the time, but by managing what I save and where I save it, I exist within that limit.

Again, DO NOT autoforwad official email and NEVER auto or manually forward FOUO (For Official Use Only) mail.

reswob

I've never really liked using webmail, so this is the solution I use. I think it takes the strongest suggestions above (using a desktop e-mail client) and solves overcomes both major obstacles (portability and security).

I just got a USB key [newegg.com] (cheap), and put Portable Thunderbird [portableapps.com] (free!) on it. After that, you can do whatever you want with the messages, including archiving messages and cleaning out the server. You can even set it up to forward to your gMail account or blend with it if needed, as suggested above.

n/a

Fetchmail should be able to securely log into your IMAP Mailbox, forward each message to your Gmail account and then purge the message automatically. It's not the cleanest solution as it requires you have a computer running constantly to relay, but if you can deal with that it should do what you want. On Windows, you would need to install Cygwin and fetchmail with it. I can detail the setup if people are interested in this as a solution to this problem.

aholtzmann

I guess Thunderbird would be good for transferring from one IMAP server to another, but you would still need your laptop to do it.

I don't have any good answers, but I have one REALLY good question: Why is it even allowed that Army documents can be stored in GMail or any other site not maintained by the Army? Email is not secure. I assume these are not Confidential, but still, it's a pretty dicey situation.

Posco Grubb

@BENBRONCO: The instructions you refer to are for accessing Gmail account via IMAP client--our military friend is looking for a way to get his army emails _into_ his Gmail account. Unfortunately, I don't have the answer, either...

mark330

Disabling POP3 for IMAP really does nothing for security. The original post does not indicate so, but a later comment indicated that the IMAP connection would require the use of SSL. If I'm not mistaken I believe that you can do POP3 of SSL as well. However, the real security concern is that the user can download their email to their own client - which is out of the Army's control. Once there, the email is also out of the Army's control, and can be forwarded to anyone.

Setting security aside for a moment...

Given the short time frame for solution, I think the solution of using Thunderbird with multiple IMAP accounts is the best short-term solution, as it continues to archive the email in the Gmail message store. I would recommend using Thunderbird Portable on a USB stick for this, continuing the "anywhere access".

MyTQuinn

You are a lucky man if the Army lets you access GMail from a government computer. The Marine Corps (and Navy) blocks nearly all webmail sites on its network.

I've been tempted to set up forwarding rules to my personal account before, but I'm 99% sure that it violates the terms of use you must have (at some point) signed to have access to a military account.

Before you try using a (far superior) web based email solution, ensure it will work anywhere you will be working.

Military networks SUCK, SUCK, SUCK. Period. The hoops we have to jump through to get any work done is ridiculous. It's amazing we get anything done on a government computer. Maybe things are better in the Army, but NMCI is atrocious. I get far more done on my Mac at home than I do on any work machine. The only saving factor is that more and more things are going towards web based apps... that is until our network goes out, again.

hoverstop

I'm in the Army myself, and I want to echo the reason why the Army is removing POP3 access (since I am also in the same position as far as using Gmail and POP3): it is for security purposes. The protocol isn't the issue here--the issue is allowing a third party (Gmail) have access to your credentials (username/password). This is especially a concern since those credentials are used for logging into almost any other DoD or Army system/site. For the average enlisted soldier, there isn't much to be concerned about, but say your battalion or brigade commanders credentials got swiped. Now you have a major security issue. Since I've received the notification from the Army on this issue, I have since shut off and removed that access on my gmail and have remained content in using Mail, Entourage or my iPhone to get my Army mail.

blueice03

Its just amazing that loads of people who are security cleared (yes, you are if you are in the army) just want to get round lots of security measures. Even the most low ranked of squaddie gets told sensitive information about movements etc.
The fact that these trusted individuals want to forward whatever level of army mail to third parties is just plain irresponsible, never mind all the legal problems.
Some security services in the UK require that you drop quite alot of personal, out of work, access to the internet; no personal websites, recommendations about personal email etc etc.
No-one knows what google do with their emails. Its okay for private things, since you are 1 in a billion, but for such crucial data (in the eyes of some) its just nowhere near trusted enough.
/myTwoCents

steveoeo

The Army is just enforcing a DoD-wide security policy which will eliminate this loophole. The USAF has been doing the same thing, and it's arguably punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice to try to circumvent it. Any access to outside networks, via IMAP or otherwise, is being much more rigidly controlled, to the point where all internet activity passes through far more rigorous firewall filters than just a few weeks ago.

For instance, today I wanted to know the types of Godiva Liqueur, and I couldn't view it because it was blocked by the firewall. Go figure.

So, good luck with it, but I doubt you'll find a way around it that isn't questionable.

pdok

It's not clear what the poster is using for sanctioned email access...Outlook or something else? If Outlook, why not create a Personal Folder for mail he wants to keep? If not, what is his client? Doesn't IMAP also support offline storage in addition to online? It seems to me there are a lot of options for getting email out of his mailbox and onto a hard drive somewhere.

RainyDay

He gets 100MB of email in a week just from the Army? Are you a member of a crack commando unit?

steve w.

if you have access to shell account just use imapsync ( [freshmeat.net] ) to move mails from .mil account to gmail ...

maybe talking to staff will help, just explain them your ${problem} ... maybe there need to get some bounces back cause your box is overquota ...

jalogisch

Hi everyone,

I also work for the US Army and have to say that sending out emails from an AKO (@us.army.mil) account to commercial email services like google presents an action which can get you banned from the system, since it is a violation of almost every IT policy the Army has. We all have the problem that the requester has - here in MEDCOM, we only get 80 MB of email storage, but the solution we use is to create an extra archive folder in our MY DOCUMENTS folder and have AutoArchive settings to move all messages older than a certain timeframe from the server profile to our archive. That way, the outlook folder stays below the 80 MB - or 100 MB in the requestor's case, all the email is kept, AND you are not violating any policies. Needless to say, if the server profile file still gets too large, I would just sort the incoming email by size and move the large messages to my "archive" right away.

humani1

@G0lluM: i think that what he means is that the guy wants to get his military emails on his gmail and not delete them off his gmail but off the military email server. the intermediate account accomplishes this because it would automatically put the emails on his primary gmail account via forwarding, and at the same time delete them off the military server to prevent him from going over his 100mb limit. this would not only make it completely hassle free, but it would allow him to save the messages for later viewing as well.
just my 2cents, not sure that is what he meant, but it is still a good idea.
i would give a way to pull this off via fetching, but i cant as it would require giving google a username and password to enter government servers via his account, so i am not even going to say it.

ubuntugamer

The poster of this question says they want to import from their .mil to their gmail account, then each week nuke all the emails on their .mil account. This introduces a problem which people may not be aware of.

Lets just say whatevermail.com allows you to import via imap - remember imap is dynamic and designed to sync. As in after the sync the user nukes the emails from their .mil - imap on their whatevermail.com upon next sync would detect the deletion from .mil and inturn delete it from whatevermail.com - thus keeping it in sync and in turn defying the point of what the poster wanted.

Of course there may be the option in whatevermail.com to handle this situation.

Overall the posters reasoning for needing to import imap is sound, the security implications far out weigh the users need. I would recommend the user get their commanding officer to request an upgrade to their 100mb limit. Others must also be facing a problem so it might be time to approach their IT team and get the 100mb limit increased, with the justification that users may be resorting to 3rd party solutions to bypass the 100mb limit and thus be comprimising security.

The poster should have really thought about the consequences before posting, in their example it is just plain stupid to even contemplate the use of a third party to handle sensitive emails.

There is a good chance also that sysadmin with a few marbles to detect that emails are being synced from a .mil to a whatevermail.com after a period of time and block it, bring it to attention of their bosses and probably cause you to be fired anyway.

dysentry

The Army policy is mainly there for password protection reasons. Yes, a hacker could potentially get into my gmail account and read my archived government emails. For that reason, I am sure the Army would rather I didn't archive my mail on a 3rd party server. But the real-deal security beef the army has is when we provide our logon credentials to google to enable POP. That act gives a third party access to the Army website, where much more damage could be done posing as the servicemember.
The Army has specifically authorized the use of Thunderbird since there is no compromise of credentials. Thunderbird portable on my encrypted USB Drive will be my new system for accessing/archiving my government mail.

T535

Some comments

1. If I have read all the settings right in gmail, gmail cannot read directly from an IMAP server. I personally think IMAP is hard to work with and is kind of a dog. I much prefer POP and to just "leave messages on server" to be safe.

2. Re the security issue: I think this is real, and the folks here raise a good point. But I thought I'd mention this just isn't a .mil issue. When I had my university set my mail alias to send everything to my gmail account, rather than my choice of IMAP or POP servers (maintained by different units on campus) a young help desk guy said "yeah, but google will be able to read your mail." Frankly, I'd rather have google be able to read and sift my mail than have my university, or any university's, IT department go through it. I am much more comfortable with google's privacy policies than my uni's, and, if I don't like the ads, I just retrieve my gmail using Outlook (I don't like T'bird because of the standard but odd mail storage system).

In the end, some organizations will be much more tolerant than others. Universities tend to be very loose, and I suspect that the military is at the other end of the continuum. But how secure is Dakota's email system supposed to be? If all that's being transmitted is "routine" .pdf and .ppt files, how secure are they? Perhaps more secure than my work, but not "top secret" or "eyes only," right? Any email sent over the internet (the public internet) is somewhat insecure--is having it sit on google's server any less safe than having a cached copy of an IMAP message on a HD or USB drive? Just curious--not trying to get anyone in trouble!

DangerousLiberal

dysentry: you don't get fired while in the military. You can be disciplined though. Either by a financial hardship or by other methods: Leavenworth.

EVERYTHING is tracked while going through the DoD network. To think that it wont be noticed that a bunch of IMAP data just happens to be going to google owned IPs wouldn't be noticed... the thought makes me laugh inside.
Like other oginizations, the army will be low key about it. They'll most likely block imap ports from being established from google's (or any other similar service) mail servers. The firewall rules are easy to setup (you can do on any windows, linux, or cisco firewall) and google would comply with a request from DoD asking what IPs the mail servers are.

Personally, I thought the army shutdown POP3 (tcp110) a long time ago.
I have been using Outlook to download from my AKO account for years now, and it worked tonight. But you must use the SSL ports. Use this link for config help:
[www.army.mil]
You can even get a CAC card reader ([en.wikipedia.org]) and send emails that are signed by the certificate on your CAC card: [www.google.com], some laptops even come with these card readers built in.

The army and DoD organizations have been trying to make it as easy as they can for the individuals to work. But there has to be boundaries.
I don't see any documentation that POP3 via SSL is going to stop being support, so I would recommend sticking with that.

Any intelligent person wonders how secure the random home users computer is. Again, nothing sent over this network is classified as secret or above.
The DoD has worked with software venders to bring free or nearly free copies of antivirus ms office etc (literally dozens of titles) to the home users. Hopefully the antivirus gets used...

If I were you, trying to live in a world not tied to any particular PC, I would setup my PC at home to pop3/ssl email off of the army's mail server. And set it to remove messages off the mail server after 10 days. That way you can see new messages on the ako web mail, and have an archived copy at home.

=$.02

rghabel

While this fix isn't specific to the US military, here is what worked for me:

[www.stumbleupon.com]

blair_one