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This kind of thing is why it's foolish to use an email server that doesn't offer IMAP access. IMAP is what allows you to get your own data to do with what you w
by firethief 9y ago
This kind of thing is why it's foolish to use an email server that doesn't offer IMAP access. IMAP is what allows you to get your own data to do with what you will.
- cperciva 9y agoSome of us still use POP3.
- ddalex 9y agoAnd they guy doing the Primitive Technology videos is building a civilization with his bare hands, but the rest of us prefer some decent tools.
- jbg_ 9y agoYes, I believe that is what parent was calling foolish.
- richardwhiuk 9y agoNo, I believe the parent was calling web access foolish. POP3 forces you to have your own data.
- vacri 9y agoWhat benefits do you see to using POP3 over IMAP?
- cperciva 9y agoIt's not that I see a benefit to POP3; it's just that I've never seen a reason to switch. I download my email to a desktop client.
- Sir_Substance 9y agoIMAP does that as well, you just don't have to delete it from the server to do so.
- cperciva 9y agoYou can run POP3 without deleting mail from the server. The POP3 commands for "download message" and "delete message" are completely independent; I typically have my mail client set to delete messages from the server 14 days after downloading them, so that I'll always have recent email in two places.
- Angostura 9y agoI use POP3 for some services. I have one mailbox that I share with my wife as a joint household e-mail address (we both also have personal addresses). Having syncing between devices would be a nightmare as things would get marked read by the other person. Yes, I could set it up to forward to our personal mailboxes, but it's been working fine for 20 years, so why change. More importantly with POP - you mail gets downloaded to your device and then that's it. It's yours, secure, for you to manage. With IMAP there's always the possibility of the ISPs server hiccuping and deleting mail off your machine that you thought you had safely downloaded.
- mirimir 9y agoEven with IMAP, you can secure messages by moving them to local folders. And with multiple devices, you can move a different set of messages to each device. You can also move messages back to the inbox, in order to share with another device. I used to be a POP fanatic, mostly because I didn't like the idea of leaving copies on the server. But then, the NSA probably logs everything, so hey.
- criddell 9y agoI know people that use it because they think it is better from a privacy standpoint. It might not be correct now but at one point the Electronic Communications Privacy Act stipulated that data left on a server for more than 180 days is considered to be abandoned and the government can easily and legally access it.
- mirimir 9y agoYes, there is that. But in reality, the NSA arguably has copies of everything. Or at least, metadata. And it almost certainly retains copies of all encrypted messages.
- criddell 9y agoI'm more worried about the situation where somebody reveals some corruption in a small town police department and the police decide to investigate that individual by looking at that person's "abandoned" data.
- RUTHLESS_RUFUS 9y agoYou know those isolated tribes throwing spears at helicopters? You're them.
- snakeanus 9y agoI use Maildir over ssh/sftp.
- notatoad 9y agoEastlink is a popular ISP, not just a webmail provider. They almost certainly do offer IMAP access to their email accounts. and this help page[1] seems to support that. [1]http://my.eastlink.ca/customersupport/internet/faqs/email.aspx http://my.eastlink.ca/customersupport/internet/faqs/email.as...
- firethief 9y agoHm, I think the article also alludes to that near the end. So it's not clear why Morshead "is facing the daunting task of going through almost two decades of email messages" to decide what to keep. It sounds like he doesn't understand (nor the journalist) that he can retrieve his emails en masse.