Study Notes

E-Mail
E-Mail

Email
As Internet has become very popular , there are many ways to communicate over internet. One of them
is email or Electronic mail.

Email is a service that allow to send the message in electronic mode in an efficient and inexpensive way.
It is used to distribute the information over internet.

As we need to communicate we need some kind of address or name to which we will send our message.
In email it has Email address, every user has unique email address or name for his/her account. User can
send or receive the messages through this email address.

Format of email is like

: username@domainname example : [email protected] here webmaster is user name and
ixambee.com is domain.

Point to note here is that user name and domain name are separated by @ symbol and email is case
insensitive that means that "A" and 'a" are treated as same. Also spaces are not allowed in the email
address.

Email Message component:

2
E-Mail

Above is a template for the email with several components marked as I,II,III,IV,V,VI.

Let us read about them in detail.

Email Header : Header comprises of

To : To whom you are sending the message

Cc : CC stands for Carbon copy. It includes those recipient addresses whom we want to keep informed
but not exactly the intended recipient.

Bcc : BCC stands for Black Carbon Copy. It is used when we do not want one or more of the recipients
to know that someone else was copied on the message.

Subject : The Subject field indicates the purpose of e-mail. It should be precise and to the point.

Greetings : Greeting is the opening of the actual message. Eg. Hi Sir or Hi Guys etc.

Text : It represents the actual content of the message.

Signature : This is the final part of an e-mail message. It includes Name of Sender, Address, and Contact
Number.

Advantages of using Email :

1)Powerful and reliable communication

2)Convenience

3)Speed

4)Inexpensive

5)Printable

6)Global reach

7)Inexpensive

8)Secure with encryption

3
E-Mail

Disadvantages of emails :
1)Forgery

E-mail doesn’t prevent from forgery, that is, someone impersonating the sender, since sender is usually
not authenticated in any way.

2)Overload

Sometimes flood in mail.

3)Junk/Spam

Junk emails are undesirable and inappropriate emails. Junk emails are sometimes referred to as spam.

How Email Works?

Email system has three components:

Mailer

Mail Server

Mailbox

Mailer :

It allow us to manage , read and compose mails. It is also called as mail program, mail client or mail
application.

Mail Server :

It deliver, store and receive the mails. It is must that mail server should be working all the time to ensure
that emails are not lost.

MailBox:

It is a folder that contain emails and information about them.

Basic working of email is similar to client-server methodology. Here the mailer is the client and Mail
server is the server.

4
E-Mail

Here in above pictorial representation, if you want to send the mail to a user then you will compose the
mail using mailer program.

After that you will click on the send button to send the mail.

The mail is router through SMTP to the user's mail server.

The mail server will then store that mail in the disk where the area is specified for that users mails.

The disk space area on mail server is called mail spool.

Now user is on POP client then it will periodically poll the pop server to get to know about if new mail
has been arrived or not.

E-Mail Features

We will discuss here key features like attachment, address book, and MIME support.

Attachment

Here we can attach files like word document, powerpoint presentation, audio/video files or images.

5
E-Mail

Address Book

Here we can store information about the people to whom we communicate regularly by sending mails.

Address book includes the nick names, email addresses, phone number etc. of the people. Using
address book allows us not to memorize email of address of a person, you just have to select recipient
name from the list.

When you select a particular name from the list, the corresponding email address link automatically get
inserted in to the To: field.

Address book also allows creating a group so that you can send a email to very member of the group at
once instead of giving each person email address one by one.

MIME
Full form : Multipurpose Internet Mail extension

It allow the mailer to send other kind of files other than text.

Some common MIME types

6
E-Mail

Email Security
Email are prone to threat by :

SPAM

VIRUS

PHISHING

SPAM MAILS : These are unsolicited Bulk E-mails(UBI) which user hasn't asked for. These are
usually sent by commercial companies for promotion of the products and services.

VIRUS : Here some malicious type of content is send with the mail that may infect the system.

PHISHING : Here unauthorised sender tries to pretend as an authorised one to steal sensitive
information like passwords, username etc.

Such emails contains link to websites that are infected with malware and direct the user to
enter details at a fake website whose look and feels are same to legitimate one.

7
E-Mail

Email Providers
There are many email providers which provide features like sending, receiving , drafting, storing etc.

Gmail

Yahoo mail

Hotmail

Icloud Mail

ATM mail

Shortmail

Mail.com

GMX mail Inbox.com

8
E-Mail

Email Protocols
Email has separate set of protocol handling. These are the set of rules that define and take care of the
way of communication either from mail server to client or from client to mail server.

We will discuss here SMTP, IMAP and POP protocols.

SMTP
Full form : Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

Features :

a) Application level protocol

b) Connection oriented protocol
c) Text based protocol
d) It handles communication between email servers.
e) Provide notification regarding incoming mails.

When you send mail to recipient , you send mail first to your email server and then it send the mail
to the recipient mail server which ultimately send the mail to the recipient. The communication
between mail server of the recipient and recipientis handled by SMTP.

SMTP is reliable , if the mail is undelivered or report an error then SMTP intimate the sender
about this.

9
E-Mail

SMTP commands
S.no Command Description

1 HELLO This intiate the SMTP conversation.

2 EHELLO This is another way to inititate a conversation this only says that server
wants to communicate by extended SMTP.

3 MAIL FROM Indicates the sender address

4 RCPT TO It identify the recipient of the message.

5 SIZE It let the server know the size of the message attached in bytes.

6 DATA It refers to the body of the message.

7 QUIT Terminate the conversation/connection.

8 VERFY Used by recepient whether the username is verified or not?

9 EXPN It is same as VRFY, except it will list all the users name when it used with a
distribution list.

10
E-Mail

IMAP
Full form : Internet Mail Access Protocol.

Five version of IMAP

Original IMAP IMAP2I MAP3 IMAP2bis IMAP4

IMAP allows the client program to manipulate the e-mail message on the server without
downloading them on the local computer.
The e-mail is hold and maintained by the remote server.
It enables us to take any action such as downloading, delete the mail without reading the mail. It
enables us to create, manipulate and delete remote message folders called mail boxes.
IMAP enables the users to search the e-mails.
It allows concurrent access to multiple mailboxes on multiple mail servers.

S.no Command Description

11
E-Mail

1 IMAP_LOGIN This opens the connection.

2 CAPABILITY Listing the server capability of support.

3 NOOP This command is used as a periodic poll for new messages or message status
updates during a period of inactivity.

4 SELECT Select a mailbox to access the message.

5 CREATE It is used to create mailbox with a specified name.

6 DELETE It is used to delete mailbox with a given name.

7 RENAME It is used to rename mailbox.

8 LOGOUT This command informs the server that client is done with the session. The
server must send BYE untagged response before the OK response and then
close the network connection.
POP

Full form : post office protocol

POP3 version is the current used version of this protocol.

POP is application level protocol It supports offline access to
messages also.

No search facility is provided.

It is necessary to download the message in order to view it offline. Only allow

one mailbox to be created on mail server.

POP Commands:

S.no Command Description

1 LOGIN This opens the connection.

2 STAT Display the number of messages currently in the mailbox.

3 LIST This command is used to get the summary of the message.

4 RETR Select a mailbox to access the message.

5 DELE It is used to delete the message.

6 RSET It is used to reset the session to its initial state.

12
E-Mail

7 QUIT It is used to log off the session.

Difference between IMPA and POP3

13
E-Mail

S.No POP IMAP

1 Single client support Multiple client support

2 Offline accessing of messages Messages are accessed online although it also supports
offline mode.

3 No search facility search facility

4 All messages need to be downloaded Selective transfer of message to client

5 Only one mailbox is created Multiple mail box are created

6 Non suitable for non-mail data suitable for non-mail data like attachments

7 Commands are generally abbreviated Commands are not abbreviated

8 Minimum server resources are needed Maximum server resources are needed

9 Downloading is not done automatically Users can view the headings and sender of e-mails and
then decide to download.

10 Mails once downloaded cannot be Allows mails to be accessed from multiple locations.
accessed from some other location.

14