IMAP- Internet Message Access Protocol

Designed by Mark Crispin at Stanford University in 1986.

All activity takes place in an email server and each device remotely connects to this server

Continuous intelligent communication between your devices and the IMAP server

Allows you to access email from multiple machines- laptop, smartphone, office computer etc

IMAP allows you to flag emails as “urgent” etc

Using IMAP you can create folders that will be shared across your devices

Supported by Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail

IMAP downside= it can take up plenty of space on a mail server thus causing your inbox to fill up, email browsing can sometimes be slower because the device has to download info off the mail server every time a new mail is viewed instead of just reading the file off the local device

Latest version is IMAP4- you can search through your mail messages for keywords while the messages are still on the mail server

Difference between POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP- in POP all your email will be downloaded to the computer and then deleted from your mail server, whereas with IMAP it remains in the server and you can access it via another IMAP mail client

IMAP advantages- messages stored on the server and are not affected if your computer fails