I’ve always wanted to have something very minimalist and simple on my phone to notify me of incoming emails, quickly view them and respond to them, instead of a separate app like Google’s Gmail and the like. And the first thing I did was to look for a ready-made telegram bot.

Apart from the Gmail bot, I was able to find nothing worth checking out, but I didn’t like it because this bot could only work with Gmail and lacked some other features. So I had to do everything myself. I added the “Email client” application to my @megaport_bot.

Although at the moment this application only supports the IMAP protocol, the fact is that this protocol supports the vast majority of email services. With IMAP, your emails are not moved to the application database and always remain on your mail server. This is important for two reasons: firstly, the bot’s database resources are not spent on emails, and secondly, it provides some additional privacy.

But the reader may quite reasonably object: what kind of privacy can we talk about if the bot needs to be told the email password? To which I can assure you that I am not interested in other people’s mail. But as you know, you can’t trust anyone, so it’s up to you to decide what information you can trust the bot with.

In addition to the above, there can really be no truly private email correspondence unless you (and the person with whom you are corresponding) encrypt and sign your emails with some serious algorithm like PGP before sending them.

To begin with, you can register an additional mailbox on Gmail or somewhere else where it is convenient for you, the main thing is that the IMAP protocol is supported. If you don’t use this email address for intimate or very important personal correspondence and notifications, then it is quite suitable for testing and further use in this bot. Perhaps, over time, the bot will be able to gain your trust.

If you are interested in this information, then you can find a detailed guide on how to use this bot in general and specifically this “Email client” application either in the bot menu (if you click on the “Guide?” button) or on the website https://megaport.biz.

In my future articles, I plan to tell you more about the software architecture of this bot, how it works from the inside, and give more information about other applications that are part of it.