Went to cancel Sanebox because its filtering is much too ham-fisted for me. I asked it to put all the stuff it had filtered back in my inbox, and got this funny (to me, anyway) message:
Make sure that you are not one of the three people left in the world still using POP (Post Office Protocol) to view your email. POP will re-download and create copies of any email moved back into your Inbox.
Partially because I feel their pain. Partially because I know @OogieM is one of the three, and now I’m wondering who the other two people are.
I have to say, I forgot about that particular piece of back-end glue - but I don’t consider that using POP3. And I can’t imagine anybody using POP3 that way ever using Sanebox on the source account.
You can use IMAP and still download all the messages, right?
So why would you use POP3? If it’s a cloud issue, you can just host your own IMAP server locally - it’s actually not that hard if you can get past the DNS/MX issues.
I suppose if you don’t want your messages to stay on “the cloud” and use only one device for email POP3 is a valid solution… and much easier than hosting an email server!
(I don’t use POP3 for the record. Google and Microsoft know it all!)
Why leave my messages on another server somewhere that I have to deal with, maintain and keep the archives in? It’s notjust about the cloud it’s about being efficient. See messages here on other issues where I have over 85K worth of archived messages that I need to refer to. That gets everything bogged down.
Using POP forces me to be more efficient with my email. Because I can’t do it on any other devices I’m not tempted to do it in a place or on a device where I do not have my full filing system available. It’s about segregating tasks to not just what I could do in a location or with some tools but where I will be most efficient and have the least friction in accomplishing my tasks. It’s also a way to limit distractions. I never have to worry about checking my phone for email because I don’t use it for that. The majority of the useful messages I get need access to other tools both analog and computer to actually process into my sytem either as projects, actions or reference. Sure, I could us IMAP on a server I ran to avoid the cloud issue but why? That’s the big advantage of POP for me. I don’t WANT to have my email available to me everywhere on all devices. That way is madness for me getting anything useful done.
That works for you but the answer to “why would I leave it somewhere” for me is simple…. e-mails are only useful to me if they exist where I am which means across devices.
That makes sense. I never need to access emails except from my main computer. If I have a need for data on my mobile devices that originated in an email it will have already been incorporated into the materials I keep related to that project which is now in Obsidian and I can carry it with me. In practice though, I have needed that capability very rarely, maybe 1-2 times a month at most. I work and live at the same place and either I am in the office at the main house or I am outside working. Very few other locations/places.
If I’m outside I am not likely to be doing anything where I need my reference emails. I don’t need to see the emails about genotyping and SNP chips when I am elbows deep in a ewe trying to extract a stuck lamb. I may need them later when I want to check her genomic data for lambing ease and perhaps update her records to reflect the problem for future genetic analysis runs. (yes, I was in that situartion yesterday about lunchtime. ) But in the moment the issue is rearranging legs and pulling a nice live lamb out. Then getting her siblings out, make sure everyone has nursed and get the family into a pen where I can watch them for a few days. Data analysis comes today, when I update the sheep records and clean up my typos in data entry into Lambtracker.
) But in the moment the issue is rearranging legs and pulling a nice live lamb out. Then getting her siblings out, make sure everyone has nursed and get the family into a pen where I can watch them for a few days. Data analysis comes today, when I update the sheep records and clean up my typos in data entry into Lambtracker.