POP3 is a term we come across very often when talking about emails. POP3 stands for 'Post Office Protocol version 3". This refers to the protocol used in receiving emails from an internet server.
If you are using any of the following email clients, Outlook express, Outlook, Netscapte mail or Eudora then you are using POP3. With POP3, the server receives all your emails and stores it in the server. You can connect to this server and download all your emails to your computer and then read it offline even when you are not connected to Internet.
But some internet websites use web servers to exchange emails. For examples the free yahoo and hotmails are web mails. In these emails, you can read your emails only from these websites. And you can also reply to emails only from these websites. However you can pay a small amount to enable POP3 in these email accounts. AOL server does not provide POP3 access.
But there are some softwares that enable accessing webmails such as yahoo without paying. E-Prompter is one such software. But it is not legal to use these software. Even if you can access the webmail using these softwares you cannot get the attachments. You can only get attachments directly from these websites.
Here Is Some m0re Info
POP3 has become the most common email client connection protocol.
Your email client talks to your email server to send it commands to login, get mail status, and send and receive email. The most common protocol used by email clients to communicate with email servers is the Post Office Protocol, first defined in RFC 918 with Version 2 published as RFC 937, and POP Version 3 published as RFC 1725.
The POP3 protocol enables any email program anywhere on the Internet to connect to any email server to perform the usual email functions, such as reading and sending, as long as they have a valid account and password.
POP3 is an open Internet standard. The common POP3 commands and responses are listed in the following table:
Command
Responses
getwelcome ()
Gets the greeting from the server.
user (username)
Login with a username. If valid username, server will respond with request for password.
pass_ (password)
Send password. If valid, server response will be two numbers, message count and mailbox size.
stat ()
Get the mailbox status. Response is two numbers, message count and mailbox size.
list ([message])
Get list of messages. An option "message" gets information on a specific message.
retr (message)
Get message number "message".
dele (message)
Delete message number "message".
rset ()
Remove all deleted message markings.
noop ()
No operation. Do nothing. Really. Needed in unusual programming situations.
quit ()
Quit. Commits all changes, unlocks the mailbox, and ends the server connection.
top (message, lines)
Gets just the first "lines" number of lines of message number "message". Useful on low bandwidth lines to get just the first part of long messages.
uidl ([message])
Gets a unique id list -- a message digest including unique ids. The option gets the unique id for the specific message "message".
You can Telnet into your email provider on port 110 and exchange POP3 commands with your server just as though you were an email application.
