To receive email using telnet in windows do the following (this is the same for linux...except for the directions to open telnet and connect...but if you use linux you should be smart enough to figure it out yourself). If you think that something isn't working look at the notes first.
Caranya:
Go to the start menu and hit run
Type in "telnet". This will bring up a window that will display microsoft telnet etc.
Type in "open (name of your mail server here) 110"
This should connect to your mail server if it uses POP (Post office protocol) on port 110. For those of you who use yahoo this won't work (though you can send mail)
Now type "USER (your username here)"
When asked for a password type "PASS (your password here)"
It should give you a little mailbox stat message if you typed everything in correctly.
To retrieve the status of your mailbox type "STAT"
This first number will be the number of messages you have and the second number will be the amount of space they take up.
Now type "LIST" to the list the messages
It will list the message numbers followed by how large they are.
To retrieve a message type "RETR (message number)"
To delete a message type "DELE (message number)"
To quit type "QUIT"
You may quit at any time during this process by typing "QUIT". Also using the escape character or control-c may work. Note: this applies to my mail server and mail servers that I've used but may not apply to all. For example, Netscape will submit an "AUTH" command after the username is entered and my mail server will return an error message. It will then try the "PASS" command and this will work.
