POP3 / webmail

Empty_pockets

Hi,

Could somebody explain to me to differences in mail, in laymens terms?

I always thought the POP3 type mail was more secure, and somehow 'better' that the hotmail/yahoo type accounts.

I have an email address given to me by O2, my ISP. they account/password is set up in my MS outlook on my home PC and I can also retrive it using an android email app.

I do have a hotmail and gmail account though these are usually just used for spam.

Thanks.

thescouselander

POP3 s just the method you use to retrieve your emails - it doesn't have anything to do with the amount of spam you get. So, on hotmail you could use the web interface by logging on to the website or you could use the POP3 interface by accessing your email using Outlook or something equivalent.

To make things even more confusing there is another interface called IMAP which is much better than POP3 if you access your emails using more than one device. If your O2 account supports IMAP I suggest this might be better if you're going to be using your Android Phone and your computer to access your emails.

DWatts

To re-iterate what thescouselander has already said:

If you own an account with Hotmail or Gmail, you can access it through a web interface. Your emails are stored in a large server, and the web interface is simply how you access those e-mails.

POP3 and IMAP are methods of accessing the mail server through an application. A program like Outlook requires a direct connection to the mail server to access e-mails - it can't connect through, say, a web interface.

POP3 is a basic method of accessing e-mails and is heavily client side (your side). What this means is by default, your mail client will download messages and leave them on the mail server, allowing you to acess them through the web interface or another POP3 connection (on your phone, for instance). If you delete a message, it will remain on the server. If you start writing a draft e-mail, it will only be on your computer.

There's also IMAP which is more advanced and is heavily 'server side', meaning your messages are always synchronised with the server. If you delete an e-mail, assuming all your devices are 'in sync' it will be deleted on all of them. If you start writing a draft on your mobile, it will be in the drafts folder of your web interface - and so on.

So POP3 and Hotmail aren't different things - your messages are in the same place, they're just different ways to access the same content. Hotmail and Gmail, I believe, use SSL to login (you can tell if the address bar says [URL]HTTPS://)[/URL], which is the highest level of security you can get. You can usually use SSL to connect through POP3 and IMAP.

Hope that helps and I haven't just confused you.

Empty_pockets

Hi,

Thanks for that, I get the idea of having a application or a webpage as the interface and just accessing the same content. For some reason with outlook i thought my mail was sent through ISP but only stored on my PC...and with hotmail, the mail is stored on hotmails servers.

Suppose I could say looking through two different windows but seeing the same view...though one of those views is a painting.

Is one considered 'better' than the other? What are the pro's and con's of each? Why hasn't one become old technology?

Thanks

thescouselander

Empty_pockets wrote: »

Hi,

Thanks for that, I get the idea of having a application or a webpage as the interface and just accessing the same content. For some reason with outlook i thought my mail was sent through ISP but only stored on my PC...and with hotmail, the mail is stored on hotmails servers.

Suppose I could say looking through two different windows but seeing the same view...though one of those views is a painting.

Is one considered 'better' than the other? What are the pro's and con's of each? Why hasn't one become old technology?

Thanks

Yes, you're kind of right. Basically when you look at Hotmail through the web you are looking at whats on the server. When you are on Outlook it downloads a copy of all the messages on the server and stores it locally on your computer.

Depending on how you set up outlook you can either leave the downloaded messages on the server or delete the copy on the server so the only copy you have left is stored locally - bear in mind that if you do the latter you will not see your downloaded messages on the webmail interface since it wont be on the email server any more.

jayme1

in the age when most people want to be able to access all their email anywhere and also on mulitple, then server storage and IMAP rules the roost.

with pop you can access your emails one place only (if they are deleted from the server) if your computer/HDD dies you loose all your email never to be got back, with IMAP you just sign into your email and bingo it's all there in your new email client. and if you have pop set to not delete the email from the server then you may as well be using IMAP anyway.

also to note hotmail when you set it up in outlook or Live Mail doesn't use pop, it uses a syncing system that keeps the server in sync but also not IMAP.

alleycat`

Depends how boring you want to get about it (pop) actually downloads the entire mail.
IMAP reads the message header but only retrieves the mail on instruction by the "client" to do so.

IMAP rules the roost, in terms of webmail, mostly because it is quicker / more efficient in how it behaves.

POP3 can be set up in such a way that the message is also left on the server (should you wish), and can also be used to interact with webmail.
It is just very inefficient in a webmail world.

Leaving mails with yahoo, gmail, etc is convenient but it does expose any mails you've left behind to the quality of the security,staff behaviour & ethics that the companies use.

I haven't read their T's and C's recently but i'm fairly certain gmail (and yahoo possibly) have caveats hidden in the legalese that they can data mine your e-mails.

E-mail, by and large, is inherently insecure as a medium from end to end. Worrying about if it is sat on your pc or yahoos Storage is just the tip of the iceberg.

DWatts

Yes, Gmail (anonymously) data mine e-mails to deliver targetted advertising.