Many long years ago (actually, prior to 2002), Yahoo! allowed access to its Yahoo! Mail service via POP3.
This meant users could read their mail using e-mail programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Eudora.
Unfortunately, the company decided to disable its free POP3 access sometime in 2002, and now only provides POP3 access to premium users.
As stated on the Yahoo! Mail help page: "The ability to access Yahoo! Mail via a POP3 e-mail client (such as Outlook or Outlook Express) is only available to customers of our premium Yahoo! Mail Plus service.
If you have not purchased the Yahoo! Mail Plus service, you will be unable to retrieve messages via an e-mail client." Well, that's not true.
The fact is you can still use your favourite e-mail programs with Yahoo! Mail if you run YPOPs, a free and open-source program which translates webmail on-the-fly to the POP3 format.
But before I proceed with this review of YPOPs, there are a few of things you should know.
Firstly, I've grown less dependent on Yahoo! Mail, mainly because I signed up with a commercial e-mail provider a few years ago.
Secondly, Yahoo! Mail faces stiff competition from Google's Gmail service, which still offers free POP3 access.
And finally, Yahoo! insists on using exclamation marks in their company and product names, so relax, dear reader, I am not shouting at you.
