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How IMAP works under the hood

(blog.lohr.dev)
238 points michidk | 1 comments | 29 Mar 25 09:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.23s | source
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accrual ◴[31 Mar 25 17:49 UTC] No.43537718[source]▶
That was a pretty interesting read. I didn't realize one could interact directly with an IMAP server like we can with FTP and telnet + HTTP.
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chasil ◴[31 Mar 25 18:41 UTC] No.43538259[source]▶
POP is a little simpler, but IMAP is designed for concurrent access by multiple clients to the same account.

What this article doesn't address is OAUTH, which is required more often now.

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1. kazinator ◴[31 Mar 25 18:44 UTC] No.43538295[source]▶
That's a hugely important use case, especially nowadays. People have mail clients running at the same time from multiple devices; e.g. desktop and mobile. Also multiple browser tabs with an instance of their webmail.