POP vs IMAP

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Thunderbird
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rgh43
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POP vs IMAP

Post by rgh43 »

Just read this to get info on my question but still wondering.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/IMAP

POP to IMAP. I have g mail so was wondering if there is any advantage for me to change to IMAP. I'm perfectly happy with POP as my current choice so no reason to change unless POP is going away so or IMAP would give me something I don’t have now. I save my e mail on my g mail account platform until g mail deletes some when it gets to capacity so I can always go back to get something as it holds a bunch of mail. What would be the opinions of the TB support members.
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DanRaisch
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Re: POP vs IMAP

Post by DanRaisch »

1) IMAP has the advantage of letting you access all of the folders on the server, unlike POP which offers access only to the server inbox folder. This means that if you send a message from computer A and later want to refer to that message while working on computer B you can access the Sent folder to do so. That advantage is not a great as it sounds if you are accessing the account from only one computer.

2) With an IMAP account you may be able to recover from any data loss by getting the provider to restore a server backup of your account. With a POP type account you are responsible for performing backups yourself. There is an extension called TEBE which, although no longer being developed, is still working in the current release version of Thunderbird. It's also possible to use a regular backup software (Acronis or the like) to backup Thunderbird's data.

3) IMAP can have drawbacks, including performance issues (lags in storing messages to folders on the server when copying or moving messages) and the like. That depends on the provider and how you connect to the Internet (cable, DSL, wifi, dial-up)

4) There's no indication right now that the POP protocol is going to be dropped by any major email providers, although IMAP may work better with Yahoo than POP.
rgh43
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Joined: February 21st, 2009, 3:27 pm
Location: Pacific NW near Mt Ranier

Re: POP vs IMAP

Post by rgh43 »

DanRaisch, Thanks, That gives me enough info to decide if I want to or not. Since I can log into my actual G mail account I have the messages there for a long time. Like last week when I & many others were blocked because of a password change I went to Google to get my messages. When the fix was sent out by TB I went to my g mail account and squared it away then forgot to tick the "load" g mail messages from now on so I ended up with 16k of messages dated back to 2015 so it does hold a lot of messages. So I will probably stay with pop as it has always worked well & not given me any problems. Since you mention Yahoo that is kind of why I asked the question as they notified me about not supporting Pop soon if I remember correctly but I rarely use their e mail & now with their security problems it most likely will stay that way.

Thanks again.
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tanstaafl
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Re: POP vs IMAP

Post by tanstaafl »

I hadn't heard of Yahoo planning to drop POP support. Could you provide some more details, or point me to a web page with more information?
rgh43
Posts: 240
Joined: February 21st, 2009, 3:27 pm
Location: Pacific NW near Mt Ranier

Re: POP vs IMAP

Post by rgh43 »

I could be wrong but I assumed that this would end my forwarding via POP. I don't really have any forwarding to yahoo from my g mails but did a long time ago so it really doesn't make any difference to me. Even if I did I still only use TB to deal with my e mail accounts, at least 3 that all forward to one g mail accessed by TB & no
one else.

Yahoo <Yahoo@communications.yahoo.com>
To:*******@yahoo.com

Hello,

You are currently receiving emails from *******@gmail.com via POP, a method for importing emails. After March 31, 2017, email importing via POP will no longer be supported and, as a result, your emails will stop being imported.

To continue receiving emails from ********@gmail.com in your inbox, please add it as a new mailbox:

Add a mailbox on your computer
Add a mailbox to the Yahoo Mail mobile app

For more information, visit our help page.

Thanks for being a Yahoo Mail user.

Best regards,
Yahoo Mail
rgh43
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Joined: February 21st, 2009, 3:27 pm
Location: Pacific NW near Mt Ranier

Re: POP vs IMAP

Post by rgh43 »

Now on second thought I'm going to have to check this, I may have one or two e mails that forward from my Yahoo account to my g mail address even though that isn't the way this reads. It says import.
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tanstaafl
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Re: POP vs IMAP

Post by tanstaafl »

Thanks for the information. That sounds like they are keeping POP support, but have dropped their equivalent of Gmail's "mail fetcher". That periodically fetches mail from other email providers using POP3 and merges them into the Gmail inbox. That is not the same thing as forwarding since it doesn't add any headers to the message.
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