ssh port forwarding

[Hans Davin Umhoefer <spudling@acm.cs.umn.edu>]

I'm trying to secure my imap authentications and connections with ssh port
forwarding (plain text passwords are making me nervous). The trouble is I
don't have an account on the machine I am trying to imap to. I'm wondering
if I'm out of luck.

Let's say i have three machines: 
local.host - my own
remote.host - a machine I have a shell account on
imap.host - the machine I have an imap account on but no shell access 

If I understand correctly the secure connection only exists between
local.host and remote.host, so there is no way for me to secure data going
between local.host and imap.host for the entire trip. The data still has
to travel between remote.host and imap.host, which has no secure
connection.

Am I understanding correctly or is there a way to do this.

Thanks,

Hans

-- 
Hans D Umhoefer (spudling@acm.cs.umn.edu)