Gmail set to drop POP3 mail fetching from other accounts

For people who like to have access to all of their emails in one handy location Gmail has long offered the facility to import messages from other accounts using POP3.

From this month that feature is going to be withdrawn. A note on Google’s support pages says, “Fetching emails from third-party accounts into your Gmail account, with POP, will no longer be supported.”

It’s also withdrawing the Gmailify feature that allows features like spam protection and inbox organization to be applied to a third-party email account.

If you want to continue getting emails from another account in your Gmail inbox Google suggests setting up forwarding from your other provider. However, if you use the Gmail app for Android, iPhone, and iPad, you can still access other accounts using a standard IMAP connection.

You could also choose to go old-school and use a local mail client like Thunderbird which can access mail from various sources, Gmail included.

Google hasn’t explained its reasoning for these changes but the withdrawal of POP3 support is likely to be on security grounds as it involves sending passwords as plain text.

Do you use Gmail to access other mail accounts? Will these changes affect you? Tell us in the comments.

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