POP 3 In A Nutshell

What is POP 3

When you receive an email, it sits in a file called your "INBOX" in your email provider's servers. If you wish to view this email message you must access this file somehow. There are several ways of doing this: a web-based interface known as "WebMail", via a program such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird running on your personal computer, or via an App running on a mobile device such as a Blackberry or iPhone. In order for the program or App to talk to your email provider's servers and retrieve your email messages, your device/computer and their server must communicate and "speak the same language" so that they can understand each other. There are really only two languages that email servers understand -- the "Internet Message Access Protocol" (IMAP) and the "Post Office Protocol" version 3 (i.e. "POP", "POP3" or "POP 3").

Pros and Cons for POP3?

POP3 is intended to be used in situations where you wish to connect to your email provider's servers periodically and download all of your new email to your computer or device. This has the following advantages:

• Once downloaded, you can view your email anytime you want on your computer or device, even if you are NOT connected to the Internet.
• If you connect to your email service provider frequently, there will not be much of a buildup of email there and thus you will not use much of their disk space (which may save you money).

POP3 has the following disadvantages:

• All of the email is downloaded to one computer/device, so you cannot access that email from any other locations once it has been downloaded (unless you download and "leave on the server;" however, this is very inefficient and prone to cause problems). This may be an issue if you are traveling or need to access your email from several different computers in different locations.
• If your computer "dies" or gets a virus, you may lose all of your email unless you have made backups.

IMAP service, which LuxSci also provides, has the opposite Pros and Cons. Read about IMAP email services.

More about POP 3

To learn more about how POP 3 works and the security issues involved in sending and receiving email, read

• Understanding Email Services: What are they and what do you need?
• The Case for Secure Email