Stop using POP for email

Post Office Protocol (POP) is a dangerous enabler. The high it delivers is the satisfying revelation of "it's working".

You send yourself a test email and boom!, it arrives on your device. #Success. Time to get back to work. You've become the technical magician, bending the machines to your will.

Certainly POP is a little bit of magic. But this magic is from the mid 1980's. POP is dangerous because of one primary limitation.

Email only "lives" on the device. On a PC running Outlook for example. Any issues with that specific computer or instance of Outlook are going to be very, very painful.

When using POP, your email is on an island in the middle of a dangerous ocean. This ocean is filled with hard drive crashes, corrupt software, failed software updates, and deadly soda spills. There is also the inescapable fact that this island is always temporary, while POP always assumes permanent residence. Email delivered via POP only gets a one way ticket. It is technically possible to get off the island, but it's going to cost you.

POP has become less common because it doesn't sync email between devices. This creates an absolutely terrible experience as soon as a mobile device enters the picture. Unfortunately many people assisting others with their technology don't understand POP, beyond the fact that it's the easiest email option to get working. While it's less popular, it's still widely used.

The quickest way to know if you're using POP is to check your settings. There are a few other "symptoms" of POP as well.

• If you delete a message on one device, your smartphone for example, this email is still in your inbox when you get to your desk. POP does not sync. When you take an action on one island, no other islands have any clue.
• Your organization hierarchy, aka folders, does not match. Folders in Outlook aren't available on your phone for example. And when you set up POP on a new PC, your folders don't come along for the ride. Since POP doesn't sync, no one is in charge of keeping track of what goes where. Any organizing you do is specific to the island.

What should I do if I'm using POP?

Switch to Internet Message Access Protocal (IMAP). When using IMAP there's a "boss", a computer (server) keeping track of everything and everyone. This "boss" keeps all our computers and devices synced up. The boss also makes it exponentially easier to move to a new computer because it can tell this computer about all of our email and folders to make sure we have everything and it goes in the right place.

Better yet, stop using email software like Outlook all together and start using modern web apps. You probably haven't had to call anyone because Linkedin was not syncing to your new computer. You never worried about server settings when checking Facebook on your new tablet. You didn't have to migrate your Amazon shopping history when you switched to a Mac. The most efficient way to get work done regardless of location or device is the Web.