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It can take days to send a It can take days to send a

letter across the country letter across the country

and weeks to go around and weeks to go around

the world.the world. To save time To save time

and money, more and and money, more and

more people are relying on more people are relying on

electronicelectronic mail. mail. It's faster, It's faster,

easy, and much cheaper easy, and much cheaper

than the using the post than the using the post

office.office.

Harness E-Mail:Harness E-Mail: How It WorksHow It Works

Sending and Receiving Messages

To receive e-mail, you need an account

on a mail server. This is similar to having

a street address where you receive

letters. One advantage over regular mail

is that you can retrieve your e-mail from

any location on earth, provided that you

have Internet access.

What is e-mail?e-mail? In its

simplest form, e-mail is an

electronic message sent from

one device to another. While

most messages go from

computer to computer, e-mail

can also be sent and received

by mobile phones, PDAs and

other devices.

In a very limited way, email was first In a very limited way, email was first introduced to the public in 1971.introduced to the public in 1971.

With e-mail, you can send or receive personal and

business-related messages with attachments, such

as photos or formatted documents. You can also

send music, video clips and software programs.

Be very careful about the emails you send because they can Be very careful about the emails you send because they can be retrieved after you have erased them.be retrieved after you have erased them.

Let's say you have a small business

with sales reps working around the

country. How do you communicate

without running up a huge phone bill?

Or what about keeping in touch with far-

flung family members? E-mail is the way

to go. It's no wonder e-mail has become

the most popular service on the

Internet.

The "subject line" in an email tells the receiver what the message is about.

At one time, Internet e-mail was good only for text

messages. You couldn't send attachments, such as

formatted documents. With the advent of MIME, which

stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension, and

other types of encoding schemes, such as UUencode,

not only can you send messages electronically, but you

can also send formatted documents, photos, audio and

video files. Just make sure that the person to whom

you send the attachment has the software capable of

opening the file.

Follow the Trail

Just as a letter makes stops at

different postal stations along

the way to its final destination,

e-mail passes from one

computer, known as a mail

server, to another as it travels

over the Internet.

                             

Once it arrives at the destination

mail server, it's stored in an

electronic mailbox until the

recipient retrieves it. This whole

process can take seconds,

allowing you to quickly

communicate with people around

the world at any time of the day

or night.

Once you connect to your mail

server, you just download your

messages to your computer or

wireless device.

e-mail-based communication is still the most e-mail-based communication is still the most widely used written medium in businesseswidely used written medium in businesses

To send e-mail, you need a

connection to the Internet and

access to a mail server that

forwards your mail. The

standard protocol used for

sending Internet e-mail is

called SMTP, short for

Simple Mail Transfer

Protocol.

It works in conjunction with

POP--Post Office

Protocol--servers. Almost all

Internet service providers

and all major online services

offer at least one e-mail

address with every account.

When you send an e-mail message,

your computer routes it to an SMTP

server. The server looks at the e-

mail address (similar to the address

on an envelope), then forwards it to

the recipient's mail server, where it's

stored until the addressee retrieves

it. Remember, you can send e-mail

anywhere in the world to anyone

who has an e-mail address.

                                                      

   

ConsMost business professionals today spend between 20% to 50% of their working time using e-mail:[reading, ordering, sorting, ‘re-contextualizing’ fragmented information and of course writing e-mail. E-mail can lead to some well-known problems:

                   

                                                      

   

                                                      

   

Use of e-mail is increasing, due to trends of globalization—distribution of organizational divisions, outsourcing, among others.

                                                       

  

                            

For security reasons, you should change your email password periodically to prevent hackers or spammers from causing your computer to have problems.

•Spam: E-mail is a push-only medium: control of who receives information lies primarily with the sender. This can lead to an overflow of unwanted or irrelevant information.

                                                 

        

                                                    

     

Receiving too much e-mail (spam) can cause you computer to crash.

Spamming and computer virusesThe usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by four phenomena: 1) e-mail bombardment2) spamming 3) phishing 4) e-mail worms.

                   

phishing is the criminal act of using a “fake” web site [THAT LOOKS ALMOST IDENTICAL TO A WELL KNOWN SITE.] The dishonest site tries to get information (bank account numbers, social security numbers, etc) for the purpose of stealing identities or bank funds.

Spamming is unsolicited commercial e-mail. Because of the very low cost of sending e-mail, spammers can send hundreds of millions of e-mail messages each day over an inexpensive Internet connection. Hundreds of active spammers sending this volume of mail results in information overload for many computer users who receive voluminous unsolicted email each day.

                                                      

   

E-mail worms use e-mail as a way of replicating themselves into vulnerable computers. Although the first e-mail worm affected UNIX computers, the problem is most common today on the more popular Microsoft Windows operating system.The combination of spam and worm programs results in users receiving a constant drizzle of junk e-mail, which reduces the usefulness of e-mail as a practical tool.

                   

WORDS TO KNOW!!!!!WORDS TO KNOW!!!!!

““replicating—to copy or imatatereplicating—to copy or imatate

““vulnerable”–at risk, unprotectedvulnerable”–at risk, unprotected

Privacy concernsPrivacy concerns

E-mail privacy, without some security precautions, can be compromised because:

•e-mail messages are generally not encrypted; •e-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to intercept and read messages;

•the Received: headers and other information in the e-mail can often identify the sender, preventing anonymous communication.

•many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of your e-mail messages on their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain up to several months on their server, even if you delete them in your mailbox;

                                                

E-mail started in 1971 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. 

e-mail-based communication is still the most widely used written medium in the business world today.

Ray TomlinsonRay Tomlinson gave society one of the greatest communication tools in history. He invented email back in He invented email back in 1971 --1971 -- essentially fostering global business communication and turning the Internet into a digital kitchen table for far-flung family members.

A Conversation With The Inventor

Of Email

To extend the addressing to the network, Tomlinson chose the "commercial at" symbol to combine the user and host names, providing the naturally meaningful notation "user@@host" that is the standard for email addressing today.