POP3 Deleter

POP3 deleter is a small perl script that retrieves the message information from a POP account or deletes messages on the selected server. In order to use it the library Mail::POP3Client is required, available from CPAN (external link, opens in a new tab). Pop3deleter is considered abandonware — the project has been renamed pop3checker.

In 2003 the way to find out what was waiting in a POP3 mailbox was to download it, and on a slow line a mailbox with a few large attachments in it (spam did the rest) could take the morning. This talks to the server instead: it lists what is there, deletes what you tell it to, and downloads nothing unless you ask.

Usage

pop3deleter.pl -s    configuration: keep or drop the accounts on file, add new ones
pop3deleter.pl -q    message count, per account
pop3deleter.pl -i    interactive: number, From, Subject and size, then delete / keep / fetch
pop3deleter.pl -d    delete: "all", "skip", or a list of message numbers (1,4,7)

Accounts live in ~/.pop3deleter/servers.conf, one server,login,password per line, and every command walks through all of them. In interactive mode f fetches the message into <n>.mail in the current directory, which is how you read the one you were not sure about. Deletions are committed when the connection closes, as POP3 does.

Anthony Petropoulos updated the script a little. His version (pop3deleter-new.pl) takes its options through Getopt::Long: -d all or -d 1,2,3, -df file to delete the numbers listed in a file, -o file to write the message list to a file, and -r to walk the mailbox newest first in interactive mode. It has no configuration file; the server and login are variables at the top of the script, and the password is asked for with echo off.

Where it stops

Plain POP3 on port 110, no TLS, and the passwords sit in a text file in your home directory. That was 2003. No mail provider has offered the former in years, so this is a record of how mail used to be checked, not something to point at an account.

One of the small utilities (2002–2007); the others are listed there, each with a page like this one.