Greetings folks,
Just wanted to let you know that I've successfully managed to get access to my email securely using port forwarding and an SSH connection via software from ssh.com(same as F-Secure, I believe). I have to say I'm surprised how great it works and this is over a paltry 9,600kbps in the US. It would cook over HSCSD. The documentation is good with an excellent example and provided you have an open SSH port on any machine in your network, you can easily check POP, IMAP, hell, technically any port you want...
While the Mocha Telnet client is a far more feature rich ssh client and far more affordable than the this one, as far as I can tell, it's the only one that offers port forwarding and thus a secure connection to email. If anyone knows differently, please speak up!
Demo versions are available at http://www.ssh.com/
FYI,
-MB