Comments on: Why The Heck Are People Still Using POP3?

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:12:47 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by vpetersson: Why the heck are people still using POP3? http://bit.ly/EWuV1 #pop3 #imap #why…

By: Alexander Ljungberg

Alexander Ljungberg — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:03:02 +0000

From a privacy point of view I tend to think that if you don’t trust the server you have the email on, you’re in trouble regardless. They can choose to store your email, POP or no POP. Encrypted email is what you need at that point (PGP, GPG).

By: Viktor Petersson

Viktor Petersson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:48:14 +0000

Murple,

You do bring up a valid point, POP3 is good from a privacy point of view.

By: Murple

Murple — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:24:28 +0000

I use POP3 precisely because IMAP was designed to keep emails on the server. I do NOT want my private emails sitting on someone else’s machine any longer than it has to. I want them on my computer where I can be assured of privacy and know that backups and availability are not in the hands of someone else who may or may not be doing a good job of it. Considering how cheap disk space is now, there’s no reason not to keep your email. I have almost every email received or sent by me since the mid 1990s, except for removed spam. You’re welcome to your IMAP, but I will never use it.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:23:57 +0000

Hi,

While I agree that IMAP has greater functionality for those who need to have access to their accounts — and all available folders — from multiple devices, I (no email power user by any means) can get by using POP and simply setting my email client to “leave message(s) on server.” Accessing the account on two computers (using Outlook on one and Opera 10′s email client on the other) leaves me with two local copies and one web copy of each email. Then, when convenient, I login to the my webmail and move the messages to desired folders (or delete them). I also have all incoming mail autoforwarded to a Google account as further back-up, which account I organize only once per month or so. So that makes 4 copies. So back-up and storage is a non-issue for me, i.e. I personally have no need to access my email via IMAP to achieve those goals.

As far as a reason for this choice (of POP over IMAP), I guess it’s because I like the simplicity of a quick download of all mail from the account’s Inbox into my clients’ inboxes (using one, global inbox). No waiting for synchronising + purging or anything. And I can easily move (to another offline folder) or delete a message in one of my offline clients w/o a second thought (as if it will be similarly moved/deleted if it were an IMAP account).

I know these things don’t prove POP to be better than IMAP. It’s just that I can achieve — to my satisfaction — some of the same desired results w/o the using the more full-featured IMAP.

To each his/her own, I guess. :-)