What is POP?

POP it is simply an acronym for the phrase "Post Office Protocol", ie Mail Protocol. A mail protocol is nothing more than a set of rules - a kind of "language" that is between your mail application (such as, for example, Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail and others) and the mail server of your provider.

How the POP protocol works?

The POP protocol is used to download your emails from the server. The steps that follow are the following:

1. Server connection
2. Download messages
3. Save locally in mail application
4. Delete messages from the server
5. Disconnect from the server

Note: The Default behavior for the POP protocol is to delete messages from the server, however most other mail applications provide the user with the ability to leave an copy of the message in the server, indefinitely or for some time that the user specifies.