POP3 mail works a lot like postal mail does. Someone will send you an e-mail, which gets delivered to your e-mail box. Then, you “pick up” that mail using an e-mail program like Microsoft Outlook. The e-mail is then moved to your e-mail program.

 

The great thing about POP3 is that if you don’t have a constant Internet connection (for example, if you have a laptop using dial-up), the e-mail is downloaded right onto your computer. You don’t need an Internet connection to view e-mail after it’s been downloaded. You can move messages between personal folders without any problems. You can even create outgoing mail and let it sit in your outbox until you connect to the Internet.

 

The bad thing about POP3, however, is that by default, your messages are deleted from the server as soon as you download them into Outlook. If something happens to your computer and you lose all your e-mail, there is no backup on the mail server. This is why it’s important to back up your Outlook data often, especially if you use POP3 mail. (Backing up Outlook data will be covered in the advanced lessons.)