E-Mail By Toby Reed
What is E-Mail? Email stands for ‘electronic mail’. Its is used for digitally sending messages (whether it only has an attachment or a photo in it) via the Internet to another user. Just like the real postal service, an address is required in order to send mail to the right person, this is called an ‘e-mail address’. It is then stored using a system called ‘store and forward’ and then sent to the user when they next come online. It has been used since 1993 and has revolutionised communication via the Internet over long distances.
How do you store other peoples addresses? Simple, its just like how you store phone numbers. In a phone book! Except with e-mail you use an address book and you store peoples e-mail address instead. This allows the user to not have to remember a lot of e-mails in order to send a message to many different people.
Benefits Of E-mail Emails are delivered extremely fast when compared to traditional post. Emails can be sent 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Webmail means emails can be sent and received from any computer, anywhere in the world, that has an Internet connection. Cheap - when using broadband, each email sent is effectively free. Dial-up users are charged at local call rates but it only takes a few seconds (for conventional email, eg text only) to send an email. Emails can be sent to one person or several people.
Disadvantages Of E-Mail The recipient needs access to the Internet to receive email. Viruses are easily spread via email attachments (most email providers scan emails for viruses on your behalf). Phishing - sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be a legitimate company to scam the user into providing information, such as personal information and bank account numbers on a bogus website. The details will then be used for identity theft. No guarantee the mail will be read until the user logs on and checks their email.
E-Mail Protocols Simple Mail Transfer Protocol SMTP The internet standard used for sending messages across IP networks in server-to-server transfers. Also used by eMail users to send a message to an eMail server. Post Office Protocol 3 POP3 Used to retrieve eMails from an eMail server over a TCP/IP connection. This is the most widely used eMail retrieval protocol. Normally users download eMails to their local computer using POP3 - this deletes them from the eMail server Internet Message Access Protocol IMAP This is the other popular eMail retrieval protocol. Normally users work on the eMails as they reside on the eMail server using IMAP and do not download them.
Carbon Copy (Cc) A carbon copy (Cc) is an exact copy of an E-Mail or anything on that matter. It can be used to send the same message to multiple recipients.
Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) A Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) is similar to a Carbon Copy (Cc) but it doesn’t show the recipients if the message has been sent to anyone else if their E-Mail address is placed into the ‘Bcc’ section.