I don't see how they can come back from that.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Edison Mail Sync Bug Allowing Access to Other Users' Email Accounts [Updated]
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
And some folk on here were singing it's praises only last night...
Last edited:
I don't see how they can survive this? I always hated the idea of services reading and tunneling my mail. This is unacceptable
Yep, it's called collaboration. When you don't have time to organize and clean out your email boxes, just hand the task off to someone else. 😃
On a serious note, this is another example -- and, yes, Apple has had plenty themselves in the past few years or more -- of businesses worried about the urgency of release before quality assurance, including allowing developers to be lazy in regard to testing. I know, verifying your work properly (i.e., thoroughly) can feel insanely tedious. However, "good enough" isn't actually good enough.
In part, seamless, quick, OTA updates were the catalyst for this behavior becoming mainstream. When items were distributed on physical media (e.g., CD) and expected to be used on devices that probably wouldn't connect to the Internet, you had to have the first version done extremely well. Now, it's "we'll worry about that later" for the majority of properties.
As somebody who had to get updates to software on floppy disk back in the day, I can tell you first versions were pretty buggy back then too. The issue has almost always been deadlines that can't be met and the executive(s) refuse to delay release when the programmers tell them they need to.
And if fastmail goes out of business, you just update the MX records on your domain to a new mail host and, boom, BigMcGuire is your uncle! But I highly doubt fastmail is going out of business anytime soon.
And, typically, the only saving grace then was if there were no feasible alternatives to the program, and non-refundable opened software packages.
I'm quite certain I've battled every manager about this at least once during a role. My mentality is if one needs to be sacrificed always push aside time rather than quality -- but, yes, I know, that's not the way business works. ;-)
Last edited:
If this announcement is causing anyone to look around for a different email provider / client, you might like to check out ProtonMail. It’s designed for data privacy and security, they don’t scan your emails, and your data is stored outside the US, just in case that’s a factor for you. Their IOS and Android apps are adequate (clean, minimalist, stable) , and you can use a few popular desktop clients on Windows , MacOS, or Linux with their Bridge program, a proxy that runs on your desktop and handles encryption/decryption before your messages leave your device. I’m not affiliated — just a happy customer for a couple years now. YMMV.
The IMAP mail protocol has been around for almost 30 years. It already keeps your mail in sync across devices. It's not exactly difficult or onerous to fill in your account information one time when you get a new device.
It's not just a gmail syncing problem.. I thought this too because it was only happening on my MacBook with my gmail account(watching videos full screen), but then it started on my mini with a completely different email account only when playing a game(intensive cpu usage). Full screen goes split screen, shows offline for account then goes quickly online, etc. Thinking keychain issue????
By the way... this Edison email issue is why only Apple Mail client can only be trusted.
What am I missing here? What is this sync feature? I'm not using Edison. Why do you need to sync between devices? Doesn't the fact of opening the email client automatically sync the email message list?
Also, Mail on my iMac is open all day. Mail doesn't pop up every 15 minutes, and I still received the notification of new email. Mail just sits in the dock. The window is closed, but the app is running.
Also, Mail on my iMac is open all day. Mail doesn't pop up every 15 minutes, and I still received the notification of new email. Mail just sits in the dock. The window is closed, but the app is running.
That’s not true though. How could a classic mail client like thunderbird, that uses your locally stored credentials, accidentally fetch someone else’s emails?
it’s because Edison or Spark and services like that take your credentials and store them on their servers. Including your messages.
It is easy to perform a test with five or ten users. It is very hard to perform tests with hundreds of thousands of users. Even if you set up millions of fake test users to spam the server, you might not know if they break something. How would fake user #643 know if they were reading the email of fake user 73440? It's very hard to test for random bugs when, you don't know what the bug is.
Exactly - and there's no good reason for allowing that. A mail client could provide the exact same services (from the point of view of the user) without copying your credentials or messages. The only reason for them to do so is data mining.
From the specs listed in your profile of your iMac... you are running High Sierra. Apparently this issue began in Mojave and has continued over into Catalina. I switched from Sierra to Catalina recently and that is when this issue began for me.
I'm so bored I'm tempted to download the app just to read other people's emails.
Yup, only trust Apple 🙄
Zero-Day Warning: It's Possible to Hack iPhones Just by Sending Emails
Default mail app on millions of iPhone and iPad has been found vulnerable to two critical zero-day vulnerabilities.
thehackernews.com
🤣🤣 that was just awesome!
If the email account is a traditional IMAP-only account, that's exactly what it needs to do. If it's an account that can also be accessed using web APIs (like e.g. Gmail or Outlook.com), Edison must store an oauth token, which can be stolen or, like in this case, "accidentally" enable other users to access your account as well.
That's precisely what companies like Edison, that insert themselves between you and your email provider, do.
Last edited:
Edison says that they started alerting impacted users that others may have had “temporary access” to their email. But if this is an IMAP client, I’d assume that it would just start slurping down all email leaving a possibly permanent copy of your complete archive on someone else’s computer, yes? Are they going to ask for those emails back?
Have to hand it to Edison. What an amazing and wondrous bug. Always be closing, swing for the fences, do nothing halfway, shoot for the stars.
Have to hand it to Edison. What an amazing and wondrous bug. Always be closing, swing for the fences, do nothing halfway, shoot for the stars.
I can confirm it is gmail. I removed my gmail account from the Mail app and the annoying thing stopped.
Last edited:
Geez, just use what comes with macOS or purchase a proven email client like Outlook or if want free, use Thunderbird. These little startup craps need to go out of business. How many more email clients does the world really need? Not to mention, this is the age of web mail and apps like Teams and Slack.