email

email One of the most important and primitive technologies employed by Internet users. It is a form of electronic messaging where a user creates a text message which may have a number of ATTACHMENTS and sends it to a recipient. The program that is used to carry out the sending is known as an EMAIL PROGRAM. In order to send an email to someone it is necessary to know their EMAIL ADDRESS. Emails are processed by an EMAIL SERVER which carries out the process of delivering email to recipients. It is possible to send a copy of an email to other recipients using a CARBON COPY or a BLIND CARBON COPY. EMAIL LISTS are collections of email addresses, used to send emails to groups of users who have a common interest. Email can be made secure by means of technologies such as CRYPTOGRAPHY: see, for example, PRIVACY ENHANCED MAIL. Email can also be abused. The most prevalent abuse is the use of SPAM, although an increasingly common form of abuse is the use of email by CYBERSTALKERS and the spreading of VIRUSes by means of attachments. There are a number of protocols used for sending email: two examples are the POST OFFICE PROTOCOL and the SIMPLE MAIL TRANSFER PROTOCOL.