Back at the end of May 2010, my home Virgin Media cable service switched from the old mail service to a new service based on Gmail.

I was collecting mail from the mail servers with fetchmail using POP3 over SSL. This carried on working over the changeover.

But lo! Today, 27th July 2010, I noticed that SSL connections were failing to connect. Later they would connect and then close with

error:1408F10B:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_RECORD:wrong version number:s3_pkt.c:284

so I looked closer. This error disappeared while I was looking, but in the process I did notice a subtle change in POP3 behaviour. There is a Gmail setting that controls what happens to mails deleted over POP3. By default it is set to keep those mails on the server - or, in less technical speak, not delete them. So they just sit there and pile up.

I don't want my mails lurking on Virgin's or Google's servers, thanks. I know 8Gb is a lot, but it is finite and I don't want to find out what happens when I hit it.