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SMTP is a protocol for sending and receiving email, while POP is for archiving. SMTP is reliable but has no way to verify senders, leading to spam and virus transfers. POP allows users to retrieve messages to a local folder and go offline to read and write responses.
There are two standards currently used for most email sent today. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. POP is an acronym for Post Office Protocol. While it may seem confusing, the difference isn’t hard to tell. POP is a protocol for archiving email. SMTP is a protocol for sending and receiving.
To give a real world illustration, SMTP would be like a postman or postman. He or she can deliver or collect mail for transfer to another location. POP is like a letterbox or post office box. This is where mail is delivered and where it remains until the recipient is ready to read it. Outgoing mail can also be placed in the mailbox.
SMTP is the standard by which the vast majority of mail is transferred over the Internet. Although it was invented in the early 1980s, it has a reputation for being very reliable. Most mail goes through smoothly and gets to the recipient quickly.
However, SMTP also has some shortcomings that weren’t foreseen when it was first created and have created problems for many modern users. SMTP has no way of verifying that senders are who they claim to be. In the 1980s, when the Internet was being used by a select group of people mostly in government and academia, this wasn’t a big deal.
Since the 1990s, it has become a big deal. The shortcomings of SMTP have given rise not only to spam, but to a number of other, more damaging enterprises, such as virus transfers. If a program can search a mailbox and send a virus as an attachment to everyone in a particular person’s contact list, using that person’s name, it is more likely to be opened by the recipient, who trusts the person who they think it comes from. While efforts have been made to increase the security of the SMTP standard, it is still a long way from being truly effective.
POP was first designed in 1984 with the idea of allowing users to log into an email server, retrieve messages to a local folder located on their computer, and then go offline to read and write responses. In part, offline features were developed at a time when Internet access was relatively expensive and users paid by the minute. Currently, most users of the POP standard use the third version, which was developed in 1988. It is often referred to as POP3.
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