Email by Telnet

[Capman]

Was not sure where to post this, so I thought here would be good.

 

I have been trying to finish up with an old email account at work, it was set up 6 years ago and is now pretty much obsolete, but we do still get the occasional email to it.

 

Lately however, we are experiencing problems getting emails from it and get server timed out error messages, so I thought I would Telnet into the email server to see if there was anything of importance there.

 

When I try open pop3.cwcom.net 110, I am told to press any key, when I do nothing happens, unless I press Enter, then it comes up disconnected.

 

Am I missing something?

[DjLizard]

Yep. You don't know how to speak POP3. But I do! Though this is not really advisable, because if you can telnet into it successfully, you can use a client on it.

 

 

You cannot really backspace or you'll get errors (most telnet clients send ^H when you backspace, but POP3 dictates ^H is a character, not a command)

 

Here is what a transcript should look like [what you will type is in bold] :

 

+OK POP3 <snip> <snip> server ready

USER djlizard

+OK User name accepted, password please

PASS *******

+OK Mailbox open, 33 messages (all spam)

LIST

1 2458

2 1739

3 8233

4 7773

5 1135

6 19369

7 5593

8 5118

9 18455

10 4055

11 18464

12 5852

13 4661

14 1543

15 13535

<that's ID # and then size, in bytes>

.

RETR 1

+OK 2458 octets

Return-Path: <snip>

Received: from <snip> ([<snip>])

by <snip> (<snip>/<snip>) with SMTP id <snip>

for <<snip@snip.snip>>; Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:33:06 -0700

Message-ID: <<snip>>

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:28:56 +0800

<etc>

DELE 1

+OK Message deleted

QUIT

+OK Sayonara

Connection to host lost.

 

 

That should basically sum up how to speak POP3.