Is there a way to encrypt the authentication to an IMAP server? A lot of
people on google mentioned setting up a SSH Tunnel but it seems to me
like most users will not bother/want to bother with this.

i guess what i am asking for is "simapd" just like we have "sftp-server"
and "sshd" is there such a beast? if not can we have ssh listen to port
143 and encrypt the connection?

 -munir