Summary of E-mail

To most people email seems a simple subject with most people thinking that it is just typing and then a click on the send button.

Email is shorthand term meaning Electronic Mail. Email much the same as a letter, only that it is exchanged in a different way. Computers use a protocol suite to send email messages in the form of packets. The first thing you need to send and receive emails is an email address. When you create an account with an Internet Service Provider you are usually given an email address to send from and receive emails. If this isn't the case you can create an email address / account at web sites such as yahoo, hotmail and gmail.

When you use a program on your computer (like Outlook or Thunderbird) to send and receive your email, the program communicates directly with your email server. To receive email, the program uses a program which checks for new incoming messages, downloads them to your computer, and deletes them from the server. To send email, it uses a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol to send the outgoing message to your server, which delivers it to the recipient's email server.

Features of email:
Forwarders-These are virtual email accounts that don't store incoming messages, but forward them to another email address.
Vacation messages- When someone sends you an email, this feature save the message, and then automatically send the sender an email with a message that you select.
Junk mail-Email servers can scan incoming email and filter out messages that look like junk mail before they get to your inbox. They can also check with 3rd party services that flag the IP address of email servers that send junk mail.