All posts by marcelatoath

A Peek Behind the Mail Curtain

Post Syndicated from marcelatoath original https://yahooeng.tumblr.com/post/174023151641

USE IMAP TO ACCESS SOME UNIQUE FEATURES

By Libby Lin, Principal Product Manager

Well, we actually won’t show you how we create the magic in our big OATH consumer mail factory. But nevertheless we wanted to share how interested developers could leverage some of our unique features we offer for our Yahoo and AOL Mail customers.

To drive experiences like our travel and shopping smart views or message threading, we tag qualified mails with something we call DECOS and THREADID. While we will not indulge in explaining how exactly we use them internally, we wanted to share how they can be used and accessed through IMAP.

So let’s just look at a sample IMAP command chain. We’ll just assume that you are familiar with the IMAP protocol at this point and you know how to properly talk to an IMAP server.

So here’s how you would retrieve DECO and THREADIDs for specific messages:

1. CONNECT

   openssl s_client -crlf -connect imap.mail.yahoo.com:993

2. LOGIN

   a login username password

   a OK LOGIN completed

3. LIST FOLDERS

   a list “” “*”

   * LIST (\Junk \HasNoChildren) “/” “Bulk Mail”

   * LIST (\Archive \HasNoChildren) “/” “Archive”

   * LIST (\Drafts \HasNoChildren) “/” “Draft”

   * LIST (\HasNoChildren) “/” “Inbox”

   * LIST (\HasNoChildren) “/” “Notes”

   * LIST (\Sent \HasNoChildren) “/” “Sent”

   * LIST (\Trash \HasChildren) “/” “Trash”

   * LIST (\HasNoChildren) “/” “Trash/l2”

   * LIST (\HasChildren) “/” “test level 1”

   * LIST (\HasNoChildren) “/” “test level 1/nestedfolder”

   * LIST (\HasNoChildren) “/” “test level 1/test level 2”

   * LIST (\HasNoChildren) “/” “&T2BZfXso-”

   * LIST (\HasNoChildren) “/” “&gQKAqk7WWr12hA-”

   a OK LIST completed

4.SELECT FOLDER

   a select inbox

   * 94 EXISTS

   * 0 RECENT

   * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1453335194] UIDs valid

   * OK [UIDNEXT 40213] Predicted next UID

   * FLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded $Junk $NotJunk)

   * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded $Junk $NotJunk)] Permanent flags

   * OK [HIGHESTMODSEQ 205]

   a OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed; now in selected state

5. SEARCH FOR UID

   a uid search 1:*

   * SEARCH 1 2 3 4 11 12 14 23 24 75 76 77 78 114 120 121 124 128 129 130 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 40139 40140 40141 40142 40143 40144 40145 40146 40147 40148     40149 40150 40151 40152 40153 40154 40155 40156 40157 40158 40159 40160 40161 40162 40163 40164 40165 40166 40167 40168 40172 40173 40174 40175 40176     40177 40178 40179 40182 40183 40184 40185 40186 40187 40188 40190 40191 40192 40193 40194 40195 40196 40197 40198 40199 40200 40201 40202 40203 40204     40205 40206 40207 40208 40209 40211 40212

   a OK UID SEARCH completed

6. FETCH DECOS BASED ON UID

   a uid fetch 40212 (X-MSG-DECOS X-MSG-ID X-MSG-THREADID)

   * 94 FETCH (UID 40212 X-MSG-THREADID “108” X-MSG-ID “ACfIowseFt7xWtj0og0L2G0T1wM” X-MSG-DECOS (“FTI” “F1” “EML”))

   a OK UID FETCH completed

Secure Images

Post Syndicated from marcelatoath original https://yahooeng.tumblr.com/post/172068649246

oath-postmaster:

By Marcel Becker

The mail team at OATH is busy  integrating  Yahoo and AOL technology to deliver an even better experience across all our consumer mail products. While privacy and security are top priority for us, we also want to improve the experience and remove unnecessary clutter across all of our products.

Starting this week we will be serving images in mails via our own secure proxy servers. This will not only increase speed and security in our own mail products and reduce the risk of phishing and other scams,  but it will also mean that our users don’t have to fiddle around with those “enable images” settings. Messages and inline images will now just show up as originally intended.

We are aware that commercial mail senders are relying on images (so-called pixels) to track delivery and open rates. Our proxy solution will continue to support most of these cases and ensure that true mail opens are recorded.

For senders serving dynamic content based on the recipient’s location (leveraging standard IP-based browser and app capabilities) we recommend falling back on other tools and technologies which do not rely on IP-based targeting.

All of our consumer mail applications (Yahoo and AOL) will benefit from this change. This includes our desktop products as well as our mobile applications across iOS and Android.

If you have any feedback or want to discuss those changes with us personally, just send us a note to [email protected].