Definition of Email
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Guillem Alsina González, on Feb. 2009
It is one of the oldest services in the Internet modern, which has facilitated interaction for decades, based on crossing messages of text, among computer users from different continents.
Email is a digital service that allows computer users to send and receive of messages with text content, as well as some added functionalities such as attaching files to the messages.
Email is also known as e-mail or e-mail (the second less frequent form), by the abbreviation of electronic mail in English.
While it is strictly not necessary for the computer is online (we can send you a message from e-mail to another Username of the same system), and that the email service is used in another network other than the Internet, intuitively any of us identifies this service with the Internet and by sending messages to Internet users located in locations distant.
The history of email dates back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a Starting from previously existing services, a messaging service was implemented in the ARPANET network that would become the precedent of the e-mail current.
It is precisely at this time that the symbol of the at sign (@) to separate and differentiate the username to which the message is addressed, from the name of the server on which the mailbox to which it belongs is hosted, a symbol that has ended up becoming universal.
Email addresses are composed of the following:
username @ server.suffix
For example, [email protected] would be a valid email address in your Format (Although I anticipate that nonexistent).
The use of the service is based on a series of programs, starting with a client in which we write the outgoing message, which is sent, once the user who writes it clicks on the button outbound, through a mail agent installed on the outbound computer or on the server to which it connects.
In home Internet connections, the email service is usually provided by the same operator, although alternatively we can also subscribe to a free or paid service independent of the connection provider to network.
This, as the main advantage, is that if we change the access provider, we will keep the mailbox regardless of our new company.
The email message is stored on the server that hosts the recipient's email mailbox after being directed to its destination through the Internet, and it is retrieved and read once the user opens its mailbox.
Initially, the email, in text format, required an application installed on the local machine.
Then came the graphical environments and, with them, the graphical clients for the e-mail and, finally, the services of webmail that allow you to manage your mail through a web interface, whose greatest exponents are Hotmail / Outlook and Gmail.
Email also made its way to mobile phones years ago, with dedicated applications and services.
Among what allows us to do this long-lived service, we have the attachment of files, reply to messages, and forward them.
Attaching files allows us to use email to send photos, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, or even complete programs.
The response allows us to write an email directly in response to another without having to re-enter the recipient's address, having the original wording in case we want to quote it.
Likewise, we can send a message to multiple recipients, respond to multiple recipients, or forward a message to a third person.
Although at different times a substitute for email has been sought, initially thinking about messages from voice, so far nothing and no one has been able to overshadow this fundamental Internet service, except perhaps messaging IP.
Applications for smartphones and desktop computers such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram or Hangouts, are the first to have overshadowed email, but without danger real replacement of it, since users choose them for different purposes and different ways of communicating.
For its part, one of the major problems encountered by this technology is the amount of spam or "junk mail" which is sent and received per day. This means that an average user is likely to receive a lot of spam on a daily basis.
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