What is an email?

What is an email?

An email is a message that has been sent electronically. It transfers data including files pictures etc. There are two main types of email, client-based email and webmail. Client-based email is often used by business users and involves the email being downloaded from a server to an application (such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird) on the user’s computer. Webmail is accessed through a web browser and can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection.

Benefits of using email

There are lots of benefits of using emails here are a few:-

1.       Speed of delivery

2.       Cost. Unlike the conventional mail system, there is no additional cost to standard broadband charges.

3.       Instant delivery on global scale

4.       Delivery to multiple recipients

5.       Attachments (e.g. documents and audio and video files)

6.       Having a record of the correspondence between users

7.       Web provider (including hotmail and gmail)

Bitesize-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.

Drawbacks

1.       However there are also a lot of drawbacks:-

2.       Privacy and security. People can hack into your emails and read material that should not be available to them. Some of the material may pose a rick to your security .

3.       Internet access. The fact that both sender and recipient have to have email account may cause a problem. You can not assume that everyone has a email account.

4.       Sometimes a lack of interactivity may be a problem.

Bitesize- 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.

Spam - unsolicited email, ie junk mail.

How does email work?

1.       Open the email client, e.g. Microsoft Outlook, or if using webmail open a browser and enter the webmail address, e.g. http://www.gmail.com and log in.

2.       Click 'New' or 'Compose'.

3.       Enter the intended recipient email address in the 'To' field.

4.       Write a suitable subject in the 'Subject' field.

5.       Write the message in the space below the Subject field.

6.       Click 'Send' to send the email.

Your email program (the client) then sends the message off to an email server by using the Simple Message Transfer Protocol, or SMTP. The email server is basically a program running on another computer. For most people, the computer is located at your Internet service provider, or ISP.

At the server, the message is dissected and the recipients culled from the message’s To, Cc, and Bcc fields in the header. The SMTP server then finds the host computer for the recipients. For example, if the message is being sent to billg@microsoft.com, the server looks up microsoft.com and sends the message off to that computer.

For a few nanoseconds, the message hops around the Internet as it makes the connection to the destination computer.

At the destination computer, another SMTP server fetches the message and stuffs it into a mailbox for the intended user. There, it sits and waits until the user logs in to collect mail. But the mailbox on the server isn’t the same thing as the inbox in your PC’s mail program.

The recipient’s mail program collects new messages from his ISP’s server. The mail program uses the Post Office Protocol (POP) to fetch the message. POP is used instead of SMTP because the email message is no longer being sent on the Internet; it has arrived. All the POP does is fetch the message waiting on the server and transfer it back to the user’s computer and his email program.

protocol	Acronym	description
Simple mail transfer protocol	SMTP	The internet standard used for sending messages across IP networks in server-to-server transfers
Post office protocol 3	POP3	Used to retrieve emails from and email server over a TCP/IP.
Internet message access protocol	IMAP	Normally users work on the emails as they reside on the email server using IMAP and do not download them.

Webmail and client server

Webmail accounts are usually free.

Email accessed from within a web browser, ie webmail

Users simply sign up to a webmail service such as Googlemail, Hotmail or Yahoo. They are then given a unique user name, password and a personal mailbox. The mailbox is accessed by visiting a specific web address and logging in. Once logged in, users can send and receive messages.

The advantage of webmail is that users can receive and send email from any computer in the world with Internet access and a browser.

Some ISPs will enable their customers to access their mailbox via webmail as well as through the email software on their PC.

Your Internet Service Provider will give you an email account, a password and a mailbox such as yourname@hostname.co.uk.

With a dial-up connection you have to pay the cost of your Internet phone calls (local rate) and in most cases a subscription to your provider (though some are free). Dial-up users can download their emails and read them offline to keep costs down.

A broadband connection is 'always on' with a flat-rate subscription. Very few people pay by the minute nowadays and the majority of people pay a monthly fee for broadband access.

Anti-virus scanning is becoming standard on email accounts and many email providers now offer a spam (electronic junk mail) filtering service.

Trans IP stores in a POP box all e-mail messages that are sent to your e-mail address. You can read, delete, reply, etc. to the messages available in your POP box with webmail.

However, as soon as you allow Outlook to send and receive, Outlook will empty your POP box and will place all e-mail messages in your IN box on your local computer. This means that you will no longer be able to read these e-mail messages with webmail. This is because these e-mail messages will no longer be in your POP box.

Vica versa any web mail you have deleted will also no longer be retrieved by Outlook.

MUA= mail user agent, client apps such as gmail and hotmail.

MTA= Mail transport agent, mail transfer agent or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer.

MDA= mail delivery agent, A mail delivery agent or message delivery agent is a computer software component that is responsible for the delivery of e-mail messages to a local recipient's mailbox.