IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a protocol used by mail servers to manage email accounts. IMAP handles updates by using a system of flags to indicate the status of each email message.
When an email message is initially received by the mail server, it is marked as “unread.” When the user reads the email, the server sets the flag to “read.” Similarly, when an email is deleted, the server sets a flag to indicate that it has been moved to the trash or deleted folder.
In addition to these basic flags, IMAP also supports more advanced flags like “answered” or “draft” that indicate the message has been replied to or is a work in progress. IMAP servers track these flags so that they can be synchronized across all devices that access the account.
When a user accesses their email account using an IMAP client (such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail), the client connects to the mail server and retrieves the list of emails and their associated flags. If the user marks an email as read or deletes an email, the client sends a command to the server to update the appropriate flag.
As a result, any updates made to email messages are immediately reflected on all devices that access the email account via IMAP. This makes it easy to access and manage email from multiple devices without having to worry about keeping messages in sync.
