Accessing mail remotely

[Dotan Cohen]

On 2/20/06, Mitch Thompson <mitchthompson at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> My personal setup is that I have fetchmail pulling my email off of my
> ISP's mailserver and storing it in mbox format on my local computer (I
> have a cablemodem account).  Then, I set up the imapd on my home
> computer and turned on the SSL port (993). I then forward access to this
> port through my firewall.  Now, no matter where I am in the world, if I
> can get internet access, I can read my email.
>
> Likewise, if I am on a business trip, I cannot send email through my ISP
> because I am not on the same domain, so I have set up port forwarding
> through SSH on my home computer and forwarded its port through my
> firewall.  If you are interested in doing this, I can send you directly
> instructions for doing this (essentially, all of my config files, after
> scrubbing, of course).
>
> It works very well, uses SSH/SSL, so it is secure, and I don't ever have
> to worry about which computer a certain email is stored on, as I do with
> POP-ping my mail.
>
> As a bonus, this method lends itself very well to having a web-based
> mail system on your home computer (ala Squirrelmail), also accessed
> securely through https:.  I have done this in the past, but after moving
> from SuSE to Kubuntu, I never got around to reinstalling and configuring
> Squirrelmail.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Mitch (reading his home email from work -- oops!) ;^)
>

Thanks, Mitch. This seems to be just what I was looking for. How do
you read the mail over SSL? In mutt/pine? Or do you connect another
email client to your box and IMAP them to the other client?

Anyone here familiar with Portable Firefox? If I need an IMAP client
on the machine that I am sitting at, can I whip up a Portable
Thunderbird (email stored at home- TB ready with my settings in a USB
drive)?

Thanks.

Dotan Cohen
http://technology-sleuth.com/technical_answer/how_can_i_be_safe_online.html