E-MAIL SYNCHRONIZATION BETWEEN HETEROGENEOUS MAIL SERVERS

A method or system for synchronizing e-mail messages for a user, particularly for POP3 protocols. E-mail messages addressed to the user are received at an e-mail control at a local server, from an external e-mail server. The e-mail control stores each e-mail message in a consolidated e-mail storage at the local server. The e-mail control stores a message identifier for each e-mail message, in a message identifier storage at the local server. It is determined whether an e-mail message in the consolidated e-mail storage has been deleted from the external e-mail server, and if so, then the e-mail message is deleted from the consolidated e-mail storage.The invention provides for forward and/or reverse synchronization of e-mail messages. Optionally, the step of determining includes comparing message identifiers in the message identifier storage to message identifiers in e-mail received from the external e-mail server. Alternatively, the step of determining includes comparing the message identifiers of e-mail on the external e-mail server to the message identifiers in the message identifier storage, or, comparing the message identifiers in the message identifier storage to the message identifiers of e-mail in the consolidated e-mail storage.