PORT 110. Checking mail through POP3

telnet your.pop.server 110

USER
PASS
STAT
LIST
RSET
QUIT
HELP
HELP <command>

The most common reason for using telnet to access your email is to delete very large messages that your email program or computer cannot handle. This is not a normal method to retrieve email, this should only be used if you have a large message that is clogging up your mailbox, or your normal email program is giving error messages or just locking up. It is recommended that you print this page out so you can have a hard copy to refer to when you need it.  
Please note that typing in the command DELE msg# and then QUIT will actually delete the email message from the server permanently, with no possible way to retrieve it again, so be careful with what you delete!
To begin, you must already be connected to the Internet. Be sure you understand that "yourdomain.com" is just an example, and you must replace that with your actual domain name. In Windows 95/98, click on the Start button, go to Run and type:

     telnet yourdomain.com 110

Click OK and your telnet session opens in its own window.
You should now see the following line:
+OK  
Use the following commands to perform certain tasks in your mailbox:

USER userid

This must be the first command after the connection is made. Supply your e-mail userid (not the full e-mail address). For example: USER bob24
 
PASS password

This must be the next command after USER. Supply your e-mail password.
 
STAT

The response to this is:  +OK #msgs #bytes
 
Where #msgs is the number of messages in the mail box and #bytes is the total bytes used by all messages.

LIST

This command lists a line for each message with its number and size in bytes.  For example:
 
+OK 5 messages
1 2306
2 1235
3 8541
4 2804
5 6525
 
TOP msg# #lines

This lists the header for msg# and the first #lines of the message text. For example, TOP 4 1 would list just the headers for message 4, where as TOP 4 10 would list the headers and first 10 lines of the message itself.

DELE msg#

This marks message number msg# for deletion from the server. This is the way to get rid of a problem causing message. In this example, you can see that message number 9 is 24 Megabytes in size, that is a problem. E-mail was never intended for large file transfer, that is what FTP is for.  So to delete this message type DELE 9
.  
RSET

When you delete a message with DELE, it is not actually deleted until the QUIT command is issued at the end of the telnet session. RSET resets any messages previously marked for deletion in this session so that the QUIT command will not delete them.

QUIT

This deletes any messages marked for deletion, and then logs you off of the mail server. This is the last command to use.

Note: Backspace will not work in the Windows 95 telnet program, if you make a typing mistake you must start over from the beginning.

Author: Jeremy Martin