Difference between revisions of "E-mail"

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E-mail

E-mail (noun) is a piece of information that is exchanged as a digital message through the Internet. E-mail is an abbreviation for electronic mail. Abbreviations include email, e.mail and e-mail.

E-mail (verb) is often used as a colloquial expression in conversation. For example, a person may say "Just e-mail me the details of that meeting". "E-mail me" means send me the information as an e-mail message.

E-mail systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which e-mail computer server systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the e-mail infrastructure, typically an e-mail server, with a network-enabled device (e.g., a personal computer) for the duration of message submission or retrieval. Originally, e-mail was always transmitted directly from one user's device to another's; nowadays this is rarely the case.

Originally a text-only communications medium, e-mail was extended to carry multi-media content attachments, which were standardized in with RFC 2045 through RFC 2049, collectively called, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME).

The foundation for today's global Internet e-mail service was created in the early ARPANET and standards for encoding of messages were proposed as early as 1973 (RFC 561). An e-mail sent in the early 1970s looked very similar to one sent on the Internet today. Conversion from the ARPANET to the Internet in the early 1980s produced the core of the current service.

Network-based e-mail was initially exchanged on the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) in extensions to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), but is today carried by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), first published as Internet standard 10 (RFC 821) in 1982. In the process of transporting e-mail messages between systems, SMTP communicates delivery parameters using a message envelope separately from the message (headers and body) itself.

E-mail Components

An electronic mail message consists of two components, the message header, and the message body, which is the e-mail's content. The message header contains control information, including:

• the originator's e-mail address
• a recipient's e-mail address in the To field
• a recipient's e-mail address in the Cc field. Cc means carbon copy. This refers to an expression used in the 1970's and earlier before their were photocopy machines. A person typed a page layered with paper on top, a piece of carbon paper in the middle and a second blank page on the bottom. When the person typed information on the typewriter, the typewriter keys would hammer each word to the top page through to the carbon paper. The carbon paper would imprint the words to the second page on the bottom.
• a recipient's e-mail address in the Bcc field. Bcc stands for blind carbon copy. When you Bcc your e-mail message to a person, you are sending the message and protecting their privacy by not sharing their e-mail address with other recipients.
• subject header field

Spam E-mail

Spam e-mail is unsolicited (not asked for) commercial e-mail often sent to numerous e-mail accounts.

There are at least two types of spam E-mail.

• Unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE)—unsolicited e-mail, sent in large quantities.
• Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE)—this more restrictive definition is used by regulators whose mandate is to regulate commerce.

Pills, porn and poker, the so-called 3 Ps, are the most common forms of business which use e-mail spam and other forms of spamvertising. In many cases, these sites are of dubious legality, and are often fronts for fraud.

Governments Reducing Spam E-mail

From the beginning of the Internet (the ARPANET), sending of junk e-mail has been prohibited, enforced by the Terms of Service/Acceptable Use Policy (ToS/AUP) of internet service providers (ISPs) and peer pressure. Even with a thousand users junk e-mail for advertising is not tenable, and with a million users it is not only impractical, but also expensive.[12] It is estimated that spam cost businesses on the order of $100 billion in 2007. As the scale of the spam problem has grown, ISPs and the public have turned to government for relief from spam, which has failed to materialize.

According to internet security firm Symantec's report published in April, the volume of spam worldwide increased 192 per cent in 2008, from 119.6 billion messages in 2007 to 349.6 billion in 2008.

Symantec said networks of computers that have been infected by malicious software and commandeered to perform a host of actions — called botnets — are responsible for about 90 per cent of all spam email.

The Government of Canada has introduced anti-spam legislation called the "Electronic Commerce Protection Act" Bill C-27 at the House of Commons to fight spam. The Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, announced on April 24, 2009 that the Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to protect consumers and businesses from the most dangerous and damaging forms of spam. The government has introduced legislation in Parliament that aims to boost confidence in online commerce by protecting the privacy and personal security concerns that are associated with spam, counterfeit websites and spyware. (Industry Canada Government of Canada)

The legislation should address two issues the Federal Conservatives promised to deal with during the last election. In the fall, they said they would introduce legislation to prohibit the use of unsolicited commercial email to collect personal information under false pretences and to engage in criminal conduct. The government promised the new law would "reduce dangerous, destructive and deceptive email and website practices, and establish new fines for those who break the law."

The act would grant the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission expanded powers to deal with spammers, including the ability to impose fines of $1 million against individuals and $10 million against businesses, Tony Clement said Friday.

In a feature modelled on U.S. legislation, the act would also allow businesses and consumers to take civil action against anyone who violates the proposed legislation.

The bill targets not only those who send email spam, but also those who send unsolicited messages to cellphones, he said.

The law would also be enforced by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which will monitor the collection of personal information via computer and the compiling of email internet addresses, and the Competition Bureau, which would handle misleading online representations.

The CRTC, Competition Bureau and Office of the Privacy Commissioner will also be given the power to share information with their counterparts in other countries who enforce similar laws internationally, "so that violators beyond our borders cannot use Canada as a spam safe haven," the government said in a statement Friday.

Under the act, Industry Canada would be a "national co-ordinating body" to expand awareness of the issue of spam and conduct further research.

The government also said last fall it would introduce legislation preventing telecommunications companies from charging fees to customers for receiving unsolicited commercial text messages. Source: (CBC News April 24, 2009)

How You Can Reduce Spam E-mail

1. Protect your computer Spam is a growing source of computer viruses. It's critical that you protect your computer from virus-carrying spam messages. Install and regularly update antivirus and anti-spam software. If you don't have the extra protection of a firewall, get it.
2. Protect your email address Reserve one email address for your trusted personal and business contacts. Create a separate, expendable email address for other online uses.
3. Protect yourself Don't try, don't buy and don't reply to spam. Just delete it. It's a great way to prevent receiving more spam in the future.

Source: <http://www.Stopspamhere.ca>

Ham E-mail

Ham e-mail is a valid and wanted e-mail message sent from your family, friends, membership organizations and or business connections.

False Positive E-mail

False positive e-mail is a valid and wanted e-mail message that was erroneously classified as a spam e-mail message by an e-mail filtering system.

False Negative E-mail

False negative e-mail is a spam e-mail message that was erroneously classified as a valid and wanted e-mail message by an e-mail filtering system.

E-mail Whitelist

An e-mail whitelist is a list of contacts that the user deems are acceptable to receive email from and should not be sent to the spam or trash folder on an e-mail client (e-mail software program).

E-mail Blacklist

An e-mail blacklist is a list of contacts that the user deems are acceptable to receive email from and should not be sent to the spam or trash folder on an e-mail client (e-mail software program).

Advantages of Using An E-mail Whitelist and Blacklist

Spam filters that come with e-mail clients (e-mail software programs) have both white and black lists of senders and keywords to look for in e-mail messages. If a spam filter keeps a whitelist, e-mail from the listed e-mail addresses, domains, and/or IP address will always be allowed.

Using whitelists and blacklists can assist in blocking unwanted messages and allowing wanted messages to get through. However, whitelists and blacklists are not perfect. E-mail whitelists are used to reduce the incidence of false positives, often based on the assumption that most legitimate mail will be from a relatively small and fixed set of senders. To block a high percentage of spam, e-mail filters have to be continuously updated since e-mail spam senders (unscrupulous, unethical people) create new e-mail addresses to send e-mail from or new keywords to use in their e-mail which allows the e-mail to slip through.

References

• "Bill C-27" Parliment Publications. Government of Canada. 24 April 2009, 05:45 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3832885&Language=e&Mode=1>.

• "Conservatives introduce anti-spam bill" CBC News 24 April 2009, 05:45 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=E-mail&oldid=330809487>.

• "E-mail." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 10 Dec 2009, 05:29 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=E-mail&oldid=330809487>.

• "E-mail spam." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Dec 2009, 07:38 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=E-mail_spam&oldid=330628145>.

• "Government of Canada Protects Canadians with the Electronic Commerce Protection Act" Industry Canada. Government of Canada. 24 April 2009, 05:45 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ic1.nsf/eng/04595.html>.

• "Learning Spam and Ham." Guardian Digital, Inc.09 July 2004, 05:29 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://infocenter.guardiandigital.com/manuals/SecureMail/node80.html>.

• "Pills, porn and poker." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 8 Nov 2009, 04:34 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pills,_porn_and_poker&oldid=324588192>.

• "Whitelist." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 10 Dec 2009, 15:21 UTC. 13 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whitelist&oldid=330878563>.