Posts Tagged ‘command line’

Telnet – POP Commands (retrieving mail using telnet)

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In order to access your mailbox you will need 4 things:

  • An active internet connection
  • The address of your pop mail server (e.g. mail.domain.ext)
  • Your username (e.g. UserName/Email Address normally)
  • Your password (e.g. Password)

The first thing to do is to open a connection from your computer to your mail server.

telnet mail.domain.ext 110

You should receive a reply like:

Trying ???.???.???.???...
Connected to mail.domain.ext.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK ready

Then log in:

USER userName

This should give you:

+OK Password required for userName.

Now give your password:

PASS passW0rd

Should yeild:

+OK userName has ? visible messages (? hidden) in ????? octets.

To see a list of your emails awaiting collection use the

LIST

command, this will also show you the id number of your messages (e.g. 1 or 2 etc.)
To view the contents of an email type

RETR

+ the id number of the message (e.g

RETR 1

).
To delete a message use

DELE

+ the id number of the message (e.g

DELE 1

).
To leave your mailbox and close the connection use

QUIT