NAME

pop3 — fetch mail from POP3 server

SYNOPSIS

pop3 [-dqstv] [-p port] [-u user] host [mailer [arg ...]]

The pop3 utility retrieves mail from a POP3 server on host, outputting all mail in the mbox format. See SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS before use.

The options are as follows:

Delete mail after retreiving it.

Query maildrop statistics. Output is of the form:

M message(s) B byte(s)

where M is the number of messages and B is the number of bytes.

Read passphrase from /dev/stdin, by default /dev/tty is used.

Trace POP3 communication.

-p port

Connect to host on port port. Defaults to 110 (pop3).

-u user

Fetch mail for user. By default your login name (as returned by getlogin(2)) is used.

If mailer is given, optionally with arguments, each message is piped through it.

The pop3 utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Retrieve mail from pop3.abc.xyz, append it to mbox, and delete it from the server

$ pop3 pop3.abc.xyz >> mbox

The same, except don't delete the mail

$ pop3 -k pop3.abc.xyz >> mbox

Like the last example, except read the passphrase from the pass file

$ pop3 -ks < pass >> mbox

Like the first example, except communication is tunneled through ssh(1)

$ ssh -f -L 1110:localhost:110 pop3.abc.xyz sleep 10
$ pop3 -p 1110 localhost >> mbox

Emulate pop3s support using stunnel(8)

$ stunnel -fd 0 < stunnel.conf
$ pop3 -p 1110 localhost

where stunnel.conf contains

[pop3s]
client = yes
connect = pop3.abc.xyz
accept = 1110

pop3 tries to comply with Internet Standard STD 53 (RFC 1939).

Jacob R. Edwards

pop3 communicates in cleartext; an encrypted tunnel should be used if security is a concern.