When you receive an email, it sits in a file called your "INBOX" in your email service provider's computers. If you wish to view this email message you must access this file somehow. There are several ways of doing this: a web-based interface known as "WebMail", or via a program such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora running on your personal computer. In order for the program running on your computer to talk to your email provider's computers and get your email messages, your computer and their computer must "speak the same language" so that they can understand each other. There are really only two languages that email computers understand -- the "Internet Message Access Protocol" (IMAP) and the "Post Office Protocol" (POP).

POP is intended to be used in situations where you wish to connect to your email service provider's computers periodically and download all of your new email to your personal computer. This has the following advantages:

• Once downloaded, you can view your email anytime you want on your personal computer, even if you are NOT connected to the Internet.
• If you connect to your email service provider frequently, there will not be much of a buildup of email there and thus you will not use much of their disk space (which may save you money).

POP also has the following disadvantages:

• All of the email is downloaded to one personal computer, so you cannot access your email from any other computers once it has been downloaded. This may be an issue if you are traveling or need to access your email from several different computers in different locations.
• If your computer "dies" or gets a virus, you may lose all of your email unless you have made backups.

IMAP service, which LuxSci also provides, has the opposite advantages and disadvantages. Read about IMAP email services.

To learn more about how POP works and the security issues involved in sending and receiving email, read Understanding Email Services: What are they and what do you need? and The Case for Secure Email.