Chapter 14. POP
POP, the Post Office Protocol, is a simple protocol that is used to download e-mail from a mail server, and is typically used through an e-mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook. You can read the first few sections of Chapter 13 if you want the big picture of where e-mail clients, and protocols like POP, fit into the history of Internet mail.
The most common implementation of POP is version 3, and is commonly referred to as POP3. Because version 3 is so dominant, the terms POP and POP3 are practically interchangeable today.
POP's chief benefit—and also its biggest weakness—is its simplicity. If you simply need to access a remote mailbox, download any new mail that has appeared, and maybe delete the mail after the download, then ...
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