Scope of this document
Everyone has at one time or the other faced the need to quickly check your POP3 mail
(this is the traditional mailbox format your ISP uses to give you an email address. POP3
(stands for Post Office Protocol) or to send mail using SMTP (Simple Mail Transport
Protocol). While it is becoming increasingly common to try to get to the mail through a
webmail front end, this document should help you read your email without having to
leave any footprints and consequent vulnerabilities on the guest machine (be aware,
public machines may be logged in as the system administrator needs, this is not a way to
bypass the security, but a method to keep your information private). This document
should help revive the black art of using a telnet screen to quickly and efficiently retrieve
and send emails without any other software. There is another need to keeping knowledge
of these skills handy, this method is impervious to any email trojan, virus, spyware etc.
which means that you can safely get a gist of the mail, before your email client gets a
glimpse of it. If your email client is crashing because of a particular email in your
mailbox, you can safely get rid of it using this method.
What you need
1. A telnet program; this isn't as hard to find as you might think. Most versions of
Windows have a rather competent version of telnet that ships with the OS. To get
to the telnet program, simply open a command prompt (START > RUN > cmd)
and then type the command telnet.
2. Your email server addresses: If your email address is ;
the server is usually mail.pcmech.com ; however some servers have separate
subdomains like pop.pcmech.com for the incoming server and smtp.pcmech.com
for outgoing server
3. Your username and password.
Reading email
Nomenclature: commands that you type are in bold; explanation of commands are in {italics}. Stuff that
you see on the screen are given in
red text
For the purposes of my illustration let's assume the following:
Your POP3 mail server address is: mail.company.com

{this retrieves mail #2 on the list}
+OK 2045 octets
X-Apparently-To: via
206.xx.11.111; Thu, 09 Sep 2004 23:02:52 -0700 X-
Originating-IP: [216.xx.11.111]
Return-Path:
Received: from 206.xx.111.112 (HELO mail.company2.com)
(216.xxx.131.194) by mail.sender.com with SMTP; Thu, 09 Sep
2004 23:02:51 -0700
From: "Get rich"
To:
Subject: Allergies bothering you? Buy drugs online.
Why don't you buy drugs from our website.
.
dele 3
+OK msg deleted
{sets message 3 for deletion, notice that the mail will not be deleted till you log out of your mailbox}
rset
+OK
{is an oops command, allows reset of the mailbox state as it was when you logged in, removes the deletion state for mail
3}
dele 2
+OK msg deleted
{now that is what we intended to delete}
quit
{self explanatory, the user logs off, deleting any messages that were marked for deletion}
Commands Glossary:
 user: identifies the username
 pass: issues the password
 stat: gets the mailbox statistics

Now that you've got the command prompt running (Windows XP and 2000 users by
going to START then RUN and type cmd) ;. You should see the familiar directory
prompt something that looks like:
C:Documents and SettingsUserNameDesktop>telnet
mail.company.com 25
{this instructs your telnet program to connect to mail.company.com and port 25, the standard port for most SMTP servers}
220 welcome to mail.company.com STMP version 1.3.0
HELO johnny.home.com
250 mail.company.com Hello johnny.home.com
{this is a handshake, to identify yourself to the computer}
MAIL FROM:
250 Sender ok
{Establish who the mail is from}
RCPT TO:
250 Recipient ok
{Establish whom the mail is going out to}
DATA
{this signifies that you are now going to type your email}
Subject: Client not pleased
{leave 1 blank line after typing Subject: so that traditional mail programs will recognize the first line as the subject of the
mail}
Sir:
The client is not pleased that there were no Cokes in the
vending machine; on attempting to placate client with
Nachos - the vending machine ate client's money without
dispensing said snack.
.
{this is a very important line a dot on a new line signifies the end of the mail}
250 Message accepted for delivery
QUIT