Gmail Adds POP3 To Email Accounts

VaultX writes "Gmail has recently added POP3 services to their free email accounts. This would allow someone to use gmail without ever seeing any of their advertisements. They are also providing SMTP, both POP3 and SMTP are forcing the use of SSL/TLS. Very interesting...now where's IMAP and what's the catch?" It's being phased in, though, so not every gmail account yet has POP access.

Catch of some other features

[Anonymous Cowdog]

I'm speaking out of ignorance here, because I don't know if there's a catch for their POP3 service, but just for reference the catch for one of their other features, forwarding to another address, is that it is "free for now."

Free IMAP?

[ted_nugent]

I can't believe they would do that. It's just too resource intensive. If they did though, I think a lot of us would give up our self-hosted vanity domains. The gmail interface beats the crap out of squirrelmail.

Re:The catch is..

[orion024]

From the gMail FAQ [google.com]

"Access: Free automatic forwarding. POP3 access is not yet available, but will be in the future for free or at a nominal fee."

In other words, once they go live I would expect pop3 access to either be a paid service, or have injected google text ads.

IMAP and Gmail

[echocharlie]

From http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answ er=10339
Q: Does G-mail support IMAP?
Gmail doesn't currently support IMAP access. As part of our ongoing commitment to give our users easy access to their email, we have introduced POP access. We look forward to announcing more features as they become available.

Re:Here's their advantage

[lunarscape]

There isn't even a way to delete emails from your account

Um, yeah, there is. "Delete Forever." Otherwise, all GMail accounts would eventually become full and useless.

Re:I am a bit reluctant.

[bsdfish]

I believe they've always stated somewhere in their documentation (FAQ, I think) that they were planning to add POP access, for which they may charge at some point in the future. I haven't seen any promises of POP being always free.

Re:Where?

[MindStalker]

Its being rolled out, not everyone has it yet.

Look in your Settings / Forwarding
for a switch to turn on pop, if the switch is not there, you're just gonna have to wait.

Delete Forever

[C.Batt]

Just cause I pick nits...

If you go to the trachcan section of your gmail screen, there is a button in it that reads "Delete Forever". Presumably, it deletes your stuff. Forever.

Re:Forwarding

[ArbitraryConstant]

They've stated that the forwarding service won't be free when the beta period ends. I suspect the same of POP3.

Unfortunately SMTP server rewrites From line

[btempleton]

I tried the SMTP server, since it would be very handy to have a free SMTP relay out there that uses userid/password for SMTP AUTH. Saves the trouble of the complex setup required in many mail agents to get this going at home.

It works, but it rewrites your From: line to be [e-mail], which is OK if you are using gmail as your home base, but not OK if it is just one of your mailboxes. However, it's their server so they are free to put this limitation on it, I guess.

Re:Here's their advantage

[jmilne]

There isn't even a way to delete emails from your account: you can only "Archive" them.

Not true. You can move a message to the Trash folder, and once it's in there, you can choose "Delete Forever" to get rid of it for good.

Re:IMAP?

[Romeozulu]

IMAP is much better, in that it only downloads the headers of the messages until you read the body. For someone that travels and has to dial-up and has moron co-workers that email large attachments around, this is a must.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The catch is..

[neverkevin]

I've used it and google has not added anything to the emails yet.

Re:Here's their advantage

[ircubic]

Quoting their own site here.

Some news stories have suggested that Google intends to keep copies of users' email messages even after they've deleted them, or closed their accounts. This is simply not true. Google keeps multiple backup copies of users' emails so that we can recover messages and restore accounts in case of errors or system failure. Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time. This is standard practice in the email industry, which Gmail and other major webmail services follow in order to provide a reliable service for users. We will make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical.

secure pop

[leonbloy]

It seems that security is taken seriously at Google.
From the Outlook settings instructions [google.com]:

# Highlight 'pop.gmail.com' under 'Account,' and click 'Properties.'
# Click the 'Advanced' tab.
# Check the box next to 'This server requires a secure connection (SSL)' under 'Outgoing Mail (SMTP).'
# Enter '465' in the 'Outgoing mail (SMTP):' field.
# Check the box next to 'This server requires a secure connection (SSL)' under 'Incoming mail (POP3).' The port will change to 995.

Re:The catch is..

[neverkevin]

It doesn't say anything about a fee here [google.com]

Re:IMAP?

[Anonymous Coward]

POP3's TOP command (an Optional command, I'll grant) will return the headers.

So if you get a client that's smart enough and the POP3 server that implements the command, those 10 MB attachments can stay off your slow connection.

Re:The catch is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was USA.net, which then became NetAddress, which then forced you pay for their service.

They started out letting you have free web and POP3 access, then only the web access was free, then nothing was.

Free email for life my ass.

Re:The catch is..

[abertoll]

Or they know most people will still use the webmail when they're "on the go." Believe it or not, but a LOT of people like webmail, it keeps their mail centralized. This might be why they aren't offering IMAP ;) (but then again, most users don't know how to use IMAP)

Re:The catch is..

[JPDeckers]

Can confirm this one.

Sent and received messages, and no ads where added.

Furthermore, when you enable pop3, you have 3 options:
* Enable POP for all mail
* Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now
* Disable Pop3 (Doh)

You can also choose to
* Keep GMail's copy in inbox
* Archive GMail's copy
* Trash GMail's copy

Sending and receiving is done through SSL-ports, and sending requires authentication.

Re:Goodbye screenscrapers

[Anonymous Coward]

The POP access still keeps all your email on their servers, so it seems to be more like a forwarding system than anything.

Re:Google Spam?

[CdBee]

I'd pay for gmail over POP3, assuming pricing was similar to MSN Hotmail's offer

so far it beats any other webmail service hands-down and I'm willing to support that with my wallet

Re:IMAP?

[legirons]

"IMAP is much better, in that it only downloads the headers of the messages until you read the body."

From RFC 1939 [faqs.org], the POP specification:

TOP msg n
After the initial +OK, the POP3 server sends the headers of the message, the blank line separating the headers from the body, and then the number of lines of the indicated message's body.

Re:Unfortunately SMTP server rewrites From line

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how it should be; if you want someone to reply elsewhere there is a reply-to: field for that.

Re:fantastic

[standsolid]

You obviously haven't used Kmail/Kontact [kde.org]. In my opinion it's the best e-mail client solution. Including GMail/Outlook 2003 as competition.

Re:Forget that...

[Aero Leviathan]

Adblock cannot block ads displayed on google.com. They are not images, not iframes, not scripts--they are embedded directly on the page, server-side.

More likely, you just don't notice the ads, since they're so non-intrusive :P But they're there. Go ahead, try this search [google.com], see if your adblock is any use. It's the same with Gmail. (Well, Gmail uses a mess of iframes and scripts for everything, but you still can't block only the ads.)