Three things.

Thing Number 1: If you're "checking your mail from all over the place", you'd probably prefer to get an IMAP account, since the mail is actually stored on the server. That way, you could check your mail via your web interface as well as from your usual mail client without losing anything.

Thing Number 2: Sending anything remotely personal unencrypted over a network is bad. It's very easy to set up POP3/IMAP over SSL. Most ISP's offer this option. This way, everything is encrypted. And this is a good thing, since most places use one password for everything (mail, shell, web, etc). Of course, I force my users / co-workers to only connect over SSL. And I use a seperate password file for mail. But not everyone's as paranoid as I am....

Thing Number 3: While it's a good learning experience to write code like this, there are a lot of good programs already made for such a thing. My personal favorite is Horde, which is a very nice suite. It is written in PHP though, so if the solutions requires perl, just search freshmeat. Perhaps some monks would like to join and write a perl clone of Horde. It could be interesting....

BlueLines

Disclaimer: This post may contain inaccurate information, be habit forming, cause atomic warfare between peaceful countries, speed up male pattern baldness, interfere with your cable reception, exile you from certain third world countries, ruin your marriage, and generally spoil your day. No batteries included, no strings attached, your mileage may vary.