This is the software programme on your computer that enables you to send,
receive and work with your email. Examples of email clients are Microsoft
Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird.
This web based programme allows you to read your email through a browser window
without having to make any changes to the computer you are on or leave any email
on the computer you are on.
The interface is
implemented as a Web site that provides access to the various functions like
reading, sending or organising messages. Emails are typically not downloaded to
the user's computer but stored on the Web-based email service provider's
servers.
Popular examples of standalone Web-based email services include Hotmail and Yahoo Mail
and Horde is an example of an ISP integrated service.
When you click the Send button in your email client, your email message
is not sent directly to your recipient's mailbox. It has to go through a
couple of processing stations, known as email servers. You can think of
these servers as post offices. When you put a letter in a letterbox, it gets
sent to your post office, then to your recipient's post office, and then to
their house. When you send an email message, you click Send, the email goes
to your Internet Service Provider's (ISP) mail server, then to your
recipient's ISP server, and then to their Inbox.
You can add extra email accounts to your main account. The
number of email accounts you have is controlled by your web host or ISP and the email
package you have with them.
You can remove any of your email accounts that you no longer require.
A default email account is the email account that is set to receive all emails
sent to you email domain that do not have a dedicated email address. Sometimes
known as the CATCH-ALL email address.
You can use an auto-responder to send a message back automatically to anyone who
sends an email to a certain email account. This can be useful for times when you
are on holiday or are unavailable, or if you have a standard message that you wish to
send in response to all emails sent to a particular email account, a “thank you”
email in response to all online orders
received or to online feedback form submissions.
You can use email filters to sort messages in to certain folders within
your email client such as Emails from the Bank, Newsletters etc. You could automatically filter emails into personal or business, to
delete unwanted "junk" email.
Filters automatically move
incoming emails into separate folders according to criteria that you specify.
These criteria may be based on who the email is addressed to or from, the subject,
the main message, etc. This is a useful feature if you have a lot of incoming
emails that need some way of being automatically organised.
Software filters can block
email based on words, phrases, or header information within the email itself.
The goal is to identify spam and filter to the Bulk or Junk mail folders,
although this can result in "false positives".
You can use email forwarders to send all email messages that are sent to an
email account to another account. If you have multiple email accounts, you can use
forwarders to send all your email to one place so you do not have to login to
multiple email accounts to check your mail.
You could set-up a forwarder to send all your emails to a friend or
colleague's email account when you are away for them to respond to.
Mailing lists can be used to send messages frequently to a large amount of
people for things such as newsletters, product updates, and more.
Spam is an email message
that you did not ask for and do not want from somebody you do not know, who
wants to sell you something. Not all unsolicited email is spam, however. Most
spam is sent in bulk to a large number of email addresses and advertises some
product or service.
Anti-Spam software
programmes exist to identify "SPAM" (unsolicited email). Once identified,
the mail is tagged as "SPAM" for later filtering using your email
client or to be automatically deleted or blocked in future.
It is common for an ISP to a use a blacklist to determine which emails should be
blocked. Blacklists contain lists of domains or IP addresses of known and
suspected spammers. Unfortunately, these blacklists may also contain many legitimate
email service providers. Just a few spam complaints can land an email service
provider or IP address on a blacklist despite the fact that the ratio of
complaints to volume of email sent is extremely low.
A whitelist is the opposite of a blacklist. Instead of listing IP addresses to
block, a whitelist includes domains or IP addresses that have been approved to deliver
email despite any blocking measures. It is common practice for ISPs to maintain both
a blacklist and a whitelist. When email service providers say they are "whitelisted"
it means that their domain name or IP address is on a specific ISP's whitelist and are
confident that emails sent using their service will be delivered.
Email Bounces – When an email is sent back to the sender as the recipient email
address was invalid or presently not working.
Bounce back handling
is the process of dealing with email messages that bounce. Caused by a 'bad'
email address or an address that is temporarily over its account quota or on a server
that is temporarily down.
This term describes what happens to email that is blocked without a
bounce email "your email was not delivered" being sent to the sender. An email that gets sent to a Blackhole gets deleted at the ISP
email server before the recipient even collects their email.
Most web hosts, ISP's or email service providers have a limit to the amount of disk space your emails can
take up on their servers. Standard sized email "quota" space is 10 to 20Mb per
email account and can be increased where needed such as when an email account is
expected to receive emails with large file attachments.
Email Passwords allow security access to your web mail or
enabling your Email Client to collect and receive as well and send your emails.
