Electronic Mail (Email): The
Electronic mail often abbreviated as Email, email, e-mail or simply mail. It
enables us in exchanging digital messages. Electronic mail can be termed as the
fastest post office which is the most commonly used service of the internet.
The messages can be sent instantaneously to any individual who has an email
address or to many persons at the same time.
in: It stands for India.
The disadvantages
of email are: it is a push technology i.e the sender controls who receives the
information. Convenient availability of mailing lists and use of "copy
all" can lead to people receiving unwanted or irrelevant information of no
use to them. The other problems include Information overload, spamming
(unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail) computer viruses,
e-mail bombardment (the intentional sending
of large volumes of messages to a target address), phishing (the criminally fraudulent process
of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and
credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic
communication), e-mail worms (using e-mail as a way of replicating themselves
into vulnerable computers) and E-mail spoofing (when the header information of
an email is altered to make the message appear to come from a known or trusted
source. It is often used as a trick to collect personal information).
The foundation for today's e-mail service was
created in the early ARPANET in extension to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
An e-mail sent in the early 1970s looked very similar to one sent on the
Internet today but today it is carried by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
a) Email Address: The
email address has three basic components. The “username”, the “@” sign
and the “users’ location or domain”.
Each Email address goes from the specific to the general. A typical example is
“lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in”.
Here
lis-forum: It is the user
id.
@: It is a separator
between user id and different organizational level of the institution.
Rest: The rest portions
after “@” sign are the level of the domain name. Levels of the domains are
nothing but different organizational levels. In the above example there are
four levels to the domain name.
ncsi: It stands for National Centre for Scientific
Information.
iisc: It stands for Indian Institute of
Science. The National Centre for Scientific Information is a part of the Indian
Institute of Science.
ernet: It
stands for the Education and Research Network. The IISC is covered under
ERNET.in: It stands for India.
The above one
is a very complex example of email address. However, our mostly used email
address has only three to five components. For example, in the rohit@gmail.com
email id, “rohit” is the user id, “@” is the separator, “gmail” stands for
Google Mail, which is the email service provider, and “.com” means Gmail is the
commercial organization.
b) Anatomy of Email Message: Messages in an electronic mail
consists of three major sections. The message header, the message body, and
attachment. The first two form the email’s content.
i) Header: The message header contains control information,
including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient
addresses. Usually, additional information is added, such as a subject header
field structured into fields like summary, sender, receiver, and other
information about the e-mail. The message header generally includes at least
the following fields:
From: It includes
the e-mail address and, optionally, the name of the sender who sends the email.
The field is filled up automatically when a message is sent.
To: Here the e-mail
address(es) and, optionally, name(s) of the message's recipient(s) is/are
included. It indicates primary recipient (more than one allowed), for secondary
recipients Carbon copy (Cc) and Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) is used to make the
data individual to other recipient. The "To:" field is similar to the
addressing at the top of a conventional letter which is delivered according to
the address on the outer envelope. Many e-mail clients will mark e-mail in the inbox
differently depending on whether the addresses are in the “To:” or “Cc:” list.
Subject: A brief
summary of the message.
Date: The local time
and date when the message was written. Many email clients fill this in
automatically when sending. The recipient's client may then display the time in
the format and time zone local to her.
Message-ID: It is
also an automatically generated field used to prevent multiple deliveries and
for reference in “In-Reply-To”. The In-Reply-To is used to link related
messages together.
ii) Body: The e-mail
clients generally allow the use of either plain text or HTML for the message
body at the option of the user. HTML e-mail messages often include an
automatically-generated plain text copy as well, for reason of compatibility. The
body sometimes contains a signature block at the end. This is exactly the same
as the body of a regular letter. The header is separated from the body by a
blank line.
Advantages
of HTML extend to the ability to include inline links and images, to set apart
previous messages in block quotes, wrap naturally on any display, use emphasis
such as underlines and italics, and change font styles. Its disadvantages
include- the increased size of the email, privacy concerns about web bugs,
abuse of HTML email as a vector for phishing attacks and the spread of
malicious software. Mailing lists commonly insist that all posts to be made in
plain-text for all the above reasons. Again, a significant number of readers
using text-based e-mail clients. So, avoiding HTML can guarantee delivering the
email.
iii) Attachments: The attachments are the files that are sent
through the email. Many email systems does not allow the software or the file
that contains “setup.exe” to be sent through email as attachments.
c) Advantages and Disadvantages of Email: There are numerous ways in which people have changed
the way they communicate. E-mail is certainly one of them, particularly when
others live at a distance. E-mail
provides a way to exchange information between two or more people with no
set-up costs and with little or no expense. With real time communication by meetings or
phone calls, participants have to work on the same schedule, and each
participant must spend the same amount of time in the meeting or call. E-mail
allows each participant in controlling their schedule independently.
Most information
or business workers today spend from one to two hours of their working day on
e-mail: reading, ordering, sorting, and writing.
The advantages of email over post offices
are –
i) Its high speed;
ii) No cost of paper envelop and
postal system;
iii) The system provides surety
of the delivery of mail because if the mail is not delivered due to some reason
then the undelivered mail bounces back to the sender, mostly within minutes.
iv) The email also allows to
attach word processing document, picture, graphic, video etc.
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Activity |
1) Open a Gmail account and use
it to communicate with your friends.
2) Send an email to your friend
informing him/her about the Online UGC NET Guide in Library and Information
Science. Also, attach your biodata to him in the same email.
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d) Examples: Now, as you understood the basics of email, you can
open a free email account in the following Email service providers. We
recommend you to use Gmail for its storage capacity as well as many more
advanced features it offers. After opening the account, you are requested to
check for email regularly.
Sl No.
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Name
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URL
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1)
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AIM Mail
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(http://webmail.aol.com)
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2)
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Gmail
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3)
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MSN Hotmail / Windows Live Mail
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4)
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Rediffmail
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(http://www.rediff.com)
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5)
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Yahoo! Mail
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