1. No idea. A very very long time on Dial-up internet months or years possibly. Minutes if you were connected to a fibre backbone. The speed and quality of your connection are critical. Phrased as you have, I could ask you how long it takes to drive from Durbin to Paris. There are a load of variables in both cases and no simple answer.

2. Are you talking about getting you mail or something about installing. I do not understand I don't think. POP email are downloaded one at a time and a record of the server reference for that mail is kept. One of the issues with flaky connections is the same mails may be downloaded over and over as the fetch restarts at the last recorded position after failure.

3. No. The term in the specification is "mail drop" at a practical level most providers use what they call the inbox as the mail drop for POP accounts. But technically the mail drop should include all incoming mail including spam and many providers do not offer that with POP instead offering a sanitised inbox style

4. Complete garbage. The connection is usually to the same server using the same wires and the same encryption. Security in this is not specific to protocol. A poorly secured mail server will be just a poorly configured regardless of the protocol you use to fetch your mail for reading.

Thank you for your reply.

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