Company won't allow MSFT exchange email

[cmarucco]

I just got the iphone 4 (back from a quick stint on BB) and my company's IT department informed me that I can't have my corporate email pushed out anymore. They say it's a security issue...

They used to allow it, and on my 3G they just sent out a password lock requirement, so this came as a shock.

Does anyone know a work-around to get my corporate email setup? I know I can use the Safari browser to access my web-based Outlook, but was hoping someone has a creative solution to setup as an email account.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[gilkisson]

Set it up as Exchange/IMAP rather than the regular Exchange option. If you can get to OWA, you can probably get to it via IMAP.

 

[jt2ga65]

I use a rather complex setup because I don't want to use the active-sync path that would allow IT to "own" my iPhone.

I have a rule set up in outlook (server-side) that forwards my email to another account as an attachment. I use procmail filter to strip the envelope and deliver the attached email to my imap folder. I can then get the original email on my iphone via imap, with the header information intact.

Realize that this does not allow for the sync of contacts to the exchange global address book, and calendar is not synced this way. There are other ways that accomplish that.

-jt2

 

[cmarucco]

Now this is what I'm talking about!

I had a lengthy back-and-forth with IT prior to the iphone coming out, trying to complain enough to have them bend their rules. No luck.

The last thing I want now, is for them to then be able to see that I tried it anyways. So I'm looking for a way to hide my access from our email servers.

I'm afraid through the IMAP solution they would still be able to see that I was pulling it down with an "external" device? Is that true?

Thanks for the idea jt2ga65, I'll investigate and try and replicate your setup. Although, are you able to send outgoing email from your account with this setup too? Or just get incoming msgs?

Thanks all!

I use a rather complex setup because I don't want to use the active-sync path that would allow IT to "own" my iPhone.

I have a rule set up in outlook (server-side) that forwards my email to another account as an attachment. I use procmail filter to strip the envelope and deliver the attached email to my imap folder. I can then get the original email on my iphone via imap, with the header information intact.

Realize that this does not allow for the sync of contacts to the exchange global address book, and calendar is not synced this way. There are other ways that accomplish that.

-jt2

 

[jt2ga65]

Thanks for the idea jt2ga65, I'll investigate and try and replicate your setup. Although, are you able to send outgoing email from your account with this setup too? Or just get incoming msgs?

I can send email via my imap account, and I have it my iPhone set to display my corporate email address in the "from" field, if I use that account. The email server I use is "trusted" by our exchange servers because it handles all our "systems" emails. There are settings that some companies use (via DNS) that specify what servers are allowed to send email for a domain, but there are few email servers that pay attention to that.

The procmail rule is complicated, so I'll post it here...

# Delete corp email message header and footer.
:0 fw
* ? (formail -x From: | fgrep -iq corpemail@corpdomain.com)
| sed -e '2,/Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit/ d' | sed -e '2,4d' | perl -e 'print reverse <>' | sed -e '1,2d' | perl -e 'print reverse <>'

# Send email that gets to this point to $MAILBOX.
:0
| formail -I"From " | /usr/cyrus/bin/deliver -e -a cyrus -q -m $MAILBOX

Basically, I forward the email from exchange to a special email address, which calls the procmail filter. The corpemail@corpdomain.com is my own email address, as that is what shows up in the "from" field in the forwarded email. sed removes the header, perl reverses the email, and sed then removed the footer. perl then reverses the email again, so it is normal. This formula took a long time to get right, and may need some customization for your application.

So far, the email guys are not aware that I do this, but they don't really care. They won't turn on imap, and I set this up before the iphone had active-sync capibilities.

-jt2