I guess it should be a common technique,
However, I tried the following two options:

1) Using my existing POP3 PHP client to access my local mail account. I am getting a "could not connect". Same code works if I run it with my localhost connecting to GoDaddy's pop3 server

2) Parsing the local mbox file - I can't figure out if I can access it, seems like I can't.

Any good ideas of which approach should be best here?