Where to configure mail.app's proxy settings?

Proxy settings are in System Preferences > Network > … > Proxies.

Mulder

I would have assumed this as well, but I've never been able to get Apple Mail to work through a SOCKS proxy. It's like it ignores the System level proxy settings for some reason. Anyone have any clue why this would be?

I think you're mistaken. Because Safari and other applications (including Mail) rely on the Network settings in System Preferences to work, they have to get it from there, otherwise neither of them would work properly. For example, if you were using a PAC proxy to get to your mail server and send/receive mail, that is set in System Preferences, in the Proxies section.

I can't speak to your experience, and I don't claim to be an expert on networking, but I do know that's the way everyone says it works. If you wanted to change your settings to use Tor, that would be done there as well.

Mulder

While I would agreed that is the way it is supposed to and should work, I am saying that it in fact does not work as intended. I do claim to be a desktop, server, and network expert. I have been having to use Proxifier to tunnel Apple Mail traffic through the SOCKS proxy for some time, but this is less than desirable.

Hi!
I have the same problem... I read somewere that there was a bug in Mail.app with SOCKS proxy but I couldn't find a way to go arround it...
Could you please elaborate in the Proxifier matter and how it works?
thanks,
fmaia

I've got the same here aswell, however I may have some information here.

iChat, just like Safari. Also rely on he Network preferences. However, in the Preference menu within iChat there's an option to ignore the proxy, or change te proxy and workaround the system-wide proxy. And guess what, this option of using the the system-wide proxy is turned off by default.

As soon as I click the checkbox, it becomes available and the system-wide proxy settings are automaticly inserted. But again, not by default.

So maybe this is the case in Mail aswell.

And still, this is indeed very annoying. I can onl use Safari. No Mail, no iChat*, no Adium, no FireFox*.




--
Grtz
* these can me done manually.

I managed to establish a connection between Mail.app and my server over SOCKS 5 proxy, but Mail immediately crashed once it tried to do the SMTP blues.

From terminal I ran:

$ tsocks /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

which got me further than starting Mail from the Dock, where it wouldn't even recognize that my remote mailboxes are available.

Sigh. Guess there's some work left for Apple programmers.

I've had this problem as well, since tethering to a certain device, I have to access everything though 1080.

Safari resolves dns through the socks proxy. Mail.app does not.

My solution for is this is to find all the IPs that the services sit upon. Store them statically in /etc/hosts, and comment them out when you're not behind a naziwall (or a tetherwall in my case).

/etc/hosts:

# Mail
17.148.16.44 mail.me.com mail.mac.com
66.249.91.109 imap.gmail.com
68.142.206.14 pop.mail.yahoo.com
72.14.205.109 smtp.gmail.com
209.191.106.160 smtp.mail.yahoo.com
17.148.16.31 smtp.me.com smtp.mac.com

Eric Sabban