Secure POP Services

What is POP

When you receive an email, it sits in your "INBOX" on your email provider's servers. If you wish to view this email message you must access this folder. 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 an Android or an iPhone. In order for the email 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.

Two common "languages" that email servers understand include the "Internet Message Access Protocol" (IMAP) and the "Post Office Protocol" version 3 (i.e. "POP", "POP3" or "POP 3"). They may also understand Microsoft ActiveSync for mobile access.

Pros and Cons of POP3

POP 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 and MobileSync services, which LuxSci also provides, have the opposite Pros and Cons. Read about IMAP email services and MobileSync.

Learn More about POP

To learn more about how POP 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

POP Email at LuxSci

LuxSci provides Secure POP mail services (as well as IMAP, WebMail, and SMTP services) to its email hosting users.

• SSL and TLS support
• Authentication required
• POP3 UIDPlus support

Using LuxSci's POP mail services, you can download your email at any time using your favorite email programs from anywhere in the world, so long as you have an Internet connection. LuxSci has step-by-step online instructions for configuring your email programs for use with its services, so it is quick and easy to get setup.

LuxSci's POP service is secure — POP connects over SSL or TLS. Using SSL or TLS, your username, password, and message contents are encrypted so that no one can "eavesdrop" on this information as it travels between LuxSci's servers and your personal computer.

LuxSci provides multiple "ports" for POP connections to help our users with difficulty connecting to our servers due to firewalls blocking the usual ports. In addition to the standard ports, users may optionally connect to their LuxSci secure POP service using port 2995.

LuxSci's POP server also supports the "UIDPlus" extension to enable your POP email client to perform its operations in a faster and more efficient manner.