E-mail

From WikiMD's Food, Medicine & Wellness Encyclopedia

E-mail or Electronic mail is a method of exchanging messages between people using electronic devices. Invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, email first entered limited use in the 1960s and by the mid-1970s had taken the form now recognized as email.

History[edit | edit source]

Email operates across computer networks, which today is primarily the Internet. Some early email systems required the author and the recipient to both be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver, and store messages.

Operation[edit | edit source]

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the technology that provides email functionality. It is an Internet standard for electronic mail (email) transmission.

Email Management[edit | edit source]

Email management is a systematic approach to maximizing the efficiency of email practices and minimizing the negative effects that email handling can have on an individual's productivity and job satisfaction.

Email Privacy[edit | edit source]

Email privacy is the broad topic dealing with issues of unauthorized access and inspection of electronic mail. This unauthorized access can happen while an email is in transit, as well as when it is stored on email servers or on a user's computer.

Email Spoofing[edit | edit source]

Email spoofing is the creation of email messages with a forged sender address. It is easy to do because the core protocols do not have any mechanism for authentication. It can be accomplished from within a LAN (Local Area Network) or from an external environment using software programs.

Email Bombing[edit | edit source]

Email bombing is the intentional sending of large volumes of messages to a target address. The overloading of the target email address can render it unusable and can even cause the mail server to crash.

See Also[edit | edit source]

E-mail Resources
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Contributors: Prab R. Tumpati, MD