Cable Forum - View Single Post - Sent e-mails also appearing in Inbox

qasdfdsaq · 24-02-2011, 19:40

Technically it's happening with SMTP - which is used with both POP3 and IMAP.

IMAP and POP3 are both "receiving" protocols, and can only retrieve and manipulate mail from a server, they cannot be used to send mail.

SMTP is required in conjunction with both to actually send mail. Note that sending email isn't the same as putting a copy of an email onto the server, as this can be done with IMAP - I think it's the redundancy in systems that's causing it.

When a client (i.e. Outlook) sends email, it will send the email via SMTP, and then *also* if configured to do so upload a copy of the email via IMAP to a specific folder (e.g. sent items). SMTP doesn't actually have any concept of accounts or mailboxes or folders (it's named Simple mail transfer protocol after all) and can work completely separately from your email account. For example, I can use Google's SMTP server to send email from my work account, and vice versa.

Therefore, you can use a different SMTP server to the IMAP server to send mail, and for that reason some SMTP servers *automatically* take the email as you're sending it and copy it to the sent folder. I think this is what's causing the duplication here.

24-02-2011, 19:40	#19
qasdfdsaq cf.mega poster Join Date: Aug 2004 Posts: 11,207	Re: Sent e-mails also appearing in Inbox Technically it's happening with SMTP - which is used with both POP3 and IMAP. IMAP and POP3 are both "receiving" protocols, and can only retrieve and manipulate mail from a server, they cannot be used to send mail. SMTP is required in conjunction with both to actually send mail. Note that sending email isn't the same as putting a copy of an email onto the server, as this can be done with IMAP - I think it's the redundancy in systems that's causing it. When a client (i.e. Outlook) sends email, it will send the email via SMTP, and then also if configured to do so upload a copy of the email via IMAP to a specific folder (e.g. sent items). SMTP doesn't actually have any concept of accounts or mailboxes or folders (it's named Simple mail transfer protocol after all) and can work completely separately from your email account. For example, I can use Google's SMTP server to send email from my work account, and vice versa. Therefore, you can use a different SMTP server to the IMAP server to send mail, and for that reason some SMTP servers automatically take the email as you're sending it and copy it to the sent folder. I think this is what's causing the duplication here.