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.


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
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