Internet:Email

Evolution of a culture
Most of the traffic in the early days was messages sent between researchers. While many of the messages were notes about long distance networking, such as suggestions for improving the software and hardware of the network, they also included news, gossip and discussion about hobbies. It was not long before the invention of the mailing-list, in which an identical message could be sent automatically to large numbers of subscribers. One of the first really big mailing-lists was "SF- LOVERS," for science fiction fans.

Requests for comment (RFC)
Right from the beginning of the Net, the collaborative procedures for running and improving it began to evolve. People posted documents for discussion, these were known as Requests For Comment (RFCs) and anyone could comment on them.

After the period of comment a document would be finalised and no changes were permitted from then on, although an RFC could be superceeded by a new RFC which could contain parts from older ones, or build on them. RFCs are numbered sequentially, and there is an archive of every RFC ( http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/ ) from 1 to 2500 (and more). You can search the archive ( http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html ).

No vendor "owns’ the Internet or the TCP/IP technology and there is no professional body responsible for the standards. So how does the system work? Since the beginning it has been a collaborative effort. TCP/IP has been developed over the years and as each development is suggested a message has gone out with a request for comments (RFC). Documentation of the protocols, standards and policies have and never will be available from a vendor. Instead, a group at AT&T (the American telephone company) have been given funds to maintain and distribute information. The Internet Network Information Centre (INTERNIC) handles administrative details. This documentation appears in a series of reports called Requests For Comment (RFCs) which anyone could comment on. After the period of comment a document would be finalised and no changes were permitted from then on, although an RFC could be superceeded by a new RFC which could contain parts from older ones, or build on them. They are numbered sequentially. They can be standards or proposals for new standards. If you ever feel like reading technical material you can.

On behalf of the Internet Society, the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the maintains a searchable index of all Requests for Comments from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html

Internet fans can vote for their favorite RFC at this address!! There are now more than 2500 RFCs, they are all archived at: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/

Future of email

 * Google wave (http://wave.google.com ) melds e-mail, instant messaging, online forums, and wikis into a grand messaging service. Due for release late 2009

Snail Mail
For traditional "snail" mail, you wrap your message in paper, seal it with spit, and give it to the government for two or three days. Then a government employee walks down your street and leaves it in a box on your front lawn!"

John O’Hara (1996) - Head of Telecoms Xtra believes the eMail security issue is overblown.

1971 - email invented
Ray Tomlinson gave society one of the greatest communication tools in history. He invented email back in 1971 -- essentially fostering global business communication and turning the Internet into a digital kitchen table for far-flung family members.

(Who is Ray Tomlinson?, 2002)

Email format
An Email address is made up of a username, the @ sign, then the domain name. Address format examples Can be sent to anyone in the world as long as the address is correct!
 * name@gmail.com,
 * name@xtra.co.nz
 * name@eit.ac.nz

How an email is sent, stored and retrieved
An email is composed on your computer, and "sent" to an outbox.

Once you are ready to send the mail (like taking it to a postbox), you initiate a "send and receive" command. This sends any mail in your outbox to your ISP (Internet Service Provider), and retrieves any mail currently stored with your ISP. The ISP’s mail server then sends your mail out to other computers on the internet. Each computer reads the email address, then routes it to another computer (router) until it eventually reaches its destination.

It is then stored in an electronic mailbox, until the recipient logs in and checks their mailbox. If you have an ISP (Internet Service Provider) the message is held on their server until the next time you use the service, when you are advised ’you have new mail’.

Working with email
Once an email message has been read is can be
 * Replied to,
 * Forwarded to another email address,
 * Filed in a folder or
 * Deleted.

What's the number of unread emails—right now, at this moment, without changing anything—in your inbox? That would be 3,487 in the case of Jen; 1 in the case of Rebecca. ...What Your Email Inbox Count Says About You (Greefield, 2012)

eMail client
Software that allows you to read, write (compose), reply, forward, file and delete messages. Most also allow you to store email addresses in an address book, conduct a text searches, add a signature files, and automatically send incoming email into specified folders based on who the message is from (message filtering)

Web mail
One trend is the use of the web browser to work with email.
 * Advantages include;
 * Don’t need an ISP account.
 * Free
 * Commonly included with existing email systems. (e.g. xtra )
 * Log into a Web site and access your email
 * Very useful for travellers (though watch how you use it in public kiosks as others may browse your email with forward and back buttons!)
 * Disadvantages include;
 * Due to server congestion it often takes ages to log on and access mail
 * Has adverts
 * Most now adding opt-in newsgroups where you select interest areas.
 * Examples
 * hotmail.com, gmail.com and most private email systems have a web browser interface to access the email from anywhere.

Security
E-mail is not private and can be read by system administrators Think of e-mail as you would a post card. Avoid including any confidential information unless you encrypt it. With billions of emails sent and received it’s unlikely that anyone will ever look at your email.
 * at your organisation’s mail server
 * at any of the routers along the way
 * at the destination mail server

In 1998 careless comments about the performance of a rival company in email by staff of Norwich Union in the UK cost them 450,00 pounds ($NZ1.1million) in damages.

Reference : Palmer, G. (1998, Apr) You`re Fired!. , NZ PC World 104. ISSN 01114 7285 pp 34-38

Privacy
Strangely few people would even think of using their work phone to natter to friends in Sweden for an hour, but they will happily spend that time composing an email message." - Geoff Palmer (1998)


 * Email is not private. It’s more like a postcard - and a postcard that may have been photocopied by everyone who handled it.

Deleting email only removes it from your PC, not from any of the dozens of copies made on its path to you. Workplace email is company property. It may be monitored by your employer and what you say on it is both yours and your employers responsibility. People have been sacked for what they have sent. The smoking gun
 * In a legal sense "to publish" mearly means "to make public". Airing your views in the tea-room is considered publishing as is sending an email. Hence, either can be used in a defamation case. If you tell a racist joke (or eMail it) you can be prosecuted under the Human Rights legislation. If you bad mouth someone, you can be sued for defamation. As one US lawyer described it "Email is the smoking gun". Don’t assume that an email sent to one person will remain with that person. Forwarding an email to many others is easy, and guess who’s name is on the top!

Header
Emails are similar to letters, with two main parts. The header contains your name and address, the name and address of the person of all the recipients, the date of the message and a subject - what the message is about. When you receive an e-mail, the header tells you where it came from, how it was sent, and when. It’s sort of like an electronic postmark. Normally only part of the header is displayed in the message, e.g.

From: support@xdrive.com Date: Wednesday, 2 Augudst 2000 21:07 To: verhaart@xtra.co.nz Subject: Congratulations

But the whole header can be accessed too, as shown.

Body
Text of the message. Format:


 * Until recently, e-mail on the Internet was only composed of plain text.
 * With the advent of MIME, ( Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension), and other encoding schemes, (eg. UUencode), messages, formatted documents, photos, sound files, and video files can be electronically sent.
 * Requires the recipient of the email to have the decoder.
 * Email can also be sent in HTML. This means that the message can have all the features available to a web page.

Types
One of the biggest advantages of email over normal mail is the ability to send an email to multiple recipients for no extra cost. These are called mailing lists and there are two main types. A distribution list is where one person stores a list of email addresses in their email client software and gives it a name - when they want to send an email to all the addresses on that list they just enter the name of the list into the To: field. A distribution list to send messages to all students or group leaders in a class is typical.

The second type of mailing list are discussion lists where groups of people on the Internet world wide get together to discuss a particular subject (to find a mailing list on a subject that interests you try a search at http://liszt.com/ where over 90,000 lists are registered). Discussion lists are often called listservs after one of the most popular pieces of software used to run them (the other popular list management software is called majordomo). Typically anyone can send an email message to a listserv and it will be forwarded or bounced to all the subscribers of that list.

A third type of list is a marketing list, where you receive information about certain products (e.g. Xoom.com - where up to 2 emails a week is common). It can be a problem to keep your name off these lists, or even unsubscribing. If you publish anything on the Internet (including a post to a newsgroup), your email may be gathered. A variation of the marketing list appeared in 2000, the Opt-In email. Customers elect to receive email and self-report personal interests. Forrester Research (Mar 1999) suggest opt-in email have an 18% click through rate compared to banner ads of 0.65%. In 2000, advertisers typically paid $0.50 per name, roughly half the price of a postal direct mail campaign. Opt-In NZ ( http://www.optin.co.nz ).

Subscribing
Lists may be open (anyone can send a message to them) or closed (only subscribers can send messages). They may also be moderated (all messages sent to them are checked for suitability by an editor before being sent to subscribers). They may also be private, where you have to ask to join or public, where anyone can join. Mailing lists often have informal rules of conduct so you are advised to simply read the mail that is distributed for some time (this is called lurking) before joining in the discussions by posting a message. Lurking will also allow you to check that that mailing list is the right one for you.

To subscribe to a list you simply send an email to a certain address. (Often you put no message in the SUBJECT field and in the body of the message you type subscribe list-name). Once you have subscribed you will be sent a welcome message which will also give instructions for unsubscribing - it is vital that you save this message, or you may not be able to remove yourself from the list. Some mailing lists can send out hundreds of messages a day, so remember to unsubscribe when you are on holiday or you may return to find your mailbox overflowing!

Netiquette
Netiquette (Internet Ettiquette), is the set of informal shared rules that govern people’s behaviour on-line. If a user is irresponsible or discourteous to others or abuse the resources that allow them and others to share information and communicate, then that user runs the risk of incurring the wrath of the Internet community. Netizens will, individually or collectively, educate, inform and sometimes even ostracize the user. In the worst cases netizens may contact the user’s Network Administrator and inform them of the abuses, and often the user may lose their network account. Generally, if you use common sense, and apologise if you make a mistake, then you will travel the Information superhighway safely.

http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/help/activities/netiquette.html

General rules

 * Mind your manners and consider other people’s feelings at all times. Never say anything over the wires that you would not say to a person’s face.
 * Think before your write. Don’t say something you will be sorry for later. These documents could be permanent. Treat every post as though you were writing to your mother! Remember other people may read the email.
 * Be wise in your choice of words. Verbal opinions expressed on paper lack the nuances of spoken language and body language and are often taken the wrong way by the recipient. You can indicate emotion using "emoticons" such as the smiley :-) or the ironic smiley ;-) . Refer to Smileys which contains many more emoticons, however you should be aware that few emoticons apart from the two above are in general usage.
 * Don’t talk about anybody in a post and certainly don’t betray a confidence. Don’t forward someone’s mail without their permission.
 * Don’t send lines longer than 70 characters. Although this is changing many people still use DOS based systems and many gateways truncate extra characters.
 * DON’T SEND A MESSAGE IN ALL CAPS IT’S HARD TO READ.
 * Use normal capitalisation. All lower case can be insulting to some people.
 * You can use CAPS for emphasis.When e-mail was text based we used the underscore key at the beginning and end of a phrase to indicate that it is a source or to indicate italics. e.g. "Jerry Mander’s _In Absence of the Sacred_ is a book on questions we should have asked about technology".
 * With email it is not as important to use correct spelling and grammer as it is for a letter, but you should try to keep your spelling and grammar as correct as possible as this is a source of annoyance to some people.
 * Avoid Vague Subjects

Smileys/Emoticons


References
 * : (11 April 2003) Acronyms, Emoticons & Smilies Page. Retrieved May 15, 2003, from http://www.muller-godschalk.com/emoticon.html
 * netlingo (n.d.), Smileys and Emoticons Retrieved August 3, 2006 from http://www.netlingo.com/smiley.cfm

Japanese Smileys
Japanese smileys don’ require you to turn your head.

Examples

Hanmeier, J (n.d.) Japanese Smileys: An otaku’s unofficial guide. Retrieved 2007, April 23 from http://www.deadlybrain.org/writings/japanesesmileys.php

Mail bombing
It can be a problem to keep your e-mail address off certain mailing lists - those kept by Internet marketing organisations. If you publish your email address on the WWW or Usenet it can be gathered, and you may find yourself receiving email asking if you want to buy for example, some computer equipment or a Russian bride! Mailinator ( http://www.mailinator.com ) A service introduced in 2003 that allows you to enter a ficticious email address. This address is automatically created and any subsequent emails sent to this account. Or to quote "Have you ever needed an email .. NOW? Have you ever gone to a website that asks for your email for no reason (other than they are going to sell your email address to the highest bidder so you get spammed for ever (and ever (and ever)))? Get your email sent here, THEN come check mailinator. Your mail will be waiting."

You can also be mail-bombed, which is when a person or a group sends so many copies of a message to a single mailbox with the explicit intention of overflowing the recipient’s mailbox. Mailbombers can also subscribe someone to numerous e-mail lists without their knowledge, once again causing the mailbox to overflow. We must therefore be careful not to offend whilst using e-mail. Email etiquette is covered separately.

Flaming
Flaming is sending an abusive or angry message to someone, and should be avoided. "Flames" are often sent in reply to a mistake that someone has made - instead you should politely point out the mistake and ask them to modify their behaviour. You should never flame anyone who simply disagrees with you - they are intitled to their opinion, no matter how wrong you think it is. It is better to politely reason with them. Do not antagonise people. There is more to do in life than insult people. Above all, keep calm: you may have misinterpreted the implied criticism or missed the ironic humour in a message; don’t send a reply while you are still hot under the collar.Wait a while until you cool down before answering.

If you must argue with someone, do it via private email, never on a disscussion group (usenet). No-one else wants to read your argument. A fight occurring on-line between two or more people is called a "flame war". These replies and counter-replies clutter up the discussion and annoy the other group members. In cases like this, both parties are wrong and acting quite childishly because they are inflicting their temper tantrums on everyone that uses that group.

Spamming
Spamming is the practice of sending the same post (usually adverts) to a great number of newsgroups on the Net, or sending unsolicited mail (again usually adverts) to millions of email addresses at once. Internet marketing organisations get their lists of email addresses from robots that trawl the WWW and newsgroups gathering valid email addresses. Spamming annoys many people, and there are campaigns on-line to stop the practice.

An example of spamming is the couple called Lawrence Canter and Martha Siegel who became, for a time, the most hated couple in cyberspace. They wrote a program, which put a little advertisement in every bulletin board on the Internet. At that time there were approximately 5,500. It was seen by millions of Internet users, not just once but over and over again. Net users were subject to `thousands of pieces of Junk mail’. The incident became known as the `green card’ case because the couple had advertised help to people wanting green card `permanent entry’ into the United States. Angry network users flamed the couple so much that their computer crashed. As a result their network provider finally pulled the plug on them.

Bulk e-mail refers to sending e-mail to large numbers of recipients. Usually to people who have requested the service. It’s different from spamming because it’s requested. Reference : Harris, D. (1999, May/Jun ) Law change only cure for spam,. , Network world No. 31, p 8.

Most ISPs automatically delete mail from recognised spammers (From Nov 2003 - Xtra added a spam filter to xtramail)

Spam can bring your site to its knees or take enormous amounts of administration time to clean up. Spam can be generated by humans and machines (bots). Bad behaviour is an example of spam management extensions for several applications (such as Mediawiki)

2011: Study sees way to win spam fight
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers completed a study aimed at finding a choke point that could reduce the flow of spam emails. The researchers tried to receive as much spam as possible for three months and then they bought items from the Web sites advertised in the messages. The researchers, led by UCSD professor Stefan Savage, found that 95 percent of credit card transactions for spam-advertised drugs and herbal remedies were handled by three main financial companies, one of which was in Azerbaijan, one in Denmark, and one in the West Indies. Savage says the study indicates that "you'd cut off the money that supports the entire spam enterprise" if those companies stopped authorizing online credit card payments to the Web sites. The researchers found that spam systems rely on just a few banks and even fewer credit card processors, which is a glaring weakness that regulators and law enforcement agencies can exploit. "The defenders can, in principle, identify which banks the scammers are using far faster than they can get new banks, and for basically zero cost," Savage says. (Markoff, 2011, May 19)

2003: Survey Says Spam Wastes Your Time
Tired of spam? You’re not alone: 49% of Americans spend more than 40 minutes per week deleting unwanted email, with 14% reporting they spend as much as three and a half hours a week -- or 7.5 days per year -- on this task, a "McAfee Americans and Spam Survey" conducted in 2003 reveals.

Reference : Survey Says Spam Wastes Your Time (2003). Retrieved March 08, 2003, from http://us.mcafee.com/root/campaign.asp?cid=8187

2009: Survey, How big is Email?
A Survey done by The Radicati Group projects there to be 1.4 billion email users (2009)and an estimated 1.9 billion in 2013. Radicati group also puts email trafic at 247 billion messages per day (2009). (The Radicati Group Inc., 2009)

-Stickypotato 12:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

2003, Sept. 23: California Gov. Gray Davis Signs Bill to Ban Online Spam
California Gov. Gray Davis signed Sen. Kevin Murray’s (D-Calif.) anti-spam legislation into law Sept. 23, thus criminalizing the sending of unsolicited commercial email to Californians and allowing state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, ISPs, and individual residents to file civil suits against spammers and their advertisers. Spam marketers and advertisers exempt from the law, which imposes a $1,000 fine for every unsolicited message, are those who get specific requests from recipients to send them email or who have previous business relationships with recipients. In addition, a fine of up to $1 million can be charged against bulk emailers who conduct blitz campaigns, in which hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of unsolicited messages are sent out on a daily basis. (Ingram, 2003)

Project Honeypot aims to trap spammers
"Jeremy Jaynes was found guilty last November by a state court in Leesburg, Virginia, of sending more than 10 million unsolicited emails a day. He was hawking pornography, work-at-home schemes and stock-picking software. The spams are estimated to have earned him around $750,000 a month. He is now on $1 million bail, forbidden from using the internet and will be sentenced this month. The jury has recommended he gets a nine-year jail term."

Unspam (2005). Project honey pot. Retrieved February 4, 2005 from http://www.projecthoneypot.org/

Boston, C (2004) Project Honeypot aims to trap spammers. New Scientist, Reed Business Information Ltd. Issue 2485, p26. Retrieved February 4, 2005 from http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18524856.900

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