Electronic Mail: What is it, Types, and More

Electronic mail or email is a service through the network that allows users to receive and send messages through the Internet. The email service operates as a means of communication quite similar to a traditional postal service, so it requires a sender, a recipient, and a text message or attached item to be sent.

What Is It For

The email can originally be intended to send and receive information in text messages. However, modern email platforms have multiple uses and offer a more excellent range of possibilities. Some of the most mutual benefits of email can be described below:

• Its primary use (and perhaps the most important) is to be able to send emails with a body of text, something that is carried out similarly to traditional postal mail to one or several email addresses at the same time.
• It is possible to send other digital items of interest to the recipient users, from links to web pages to multimedia content and files.
• Allows you to receive newsletters through subscriptions.
• It offers a platform to create a virtual directory with the email addresses of friends, acquaintances, companies and others.

In this way, and from a general point of view, email serves as a platform for exchanging information through the personal address of each user. It can be organized through a digital device connected to the network.

Types of Electronic Mail

All types of email work on the same principle: Allow the exchange of information. However, depending on their use, they are usually separated into three different types :

Personal Email

These are email accounts create by users for personal purposes. An individual can make as many email addresses as he wishes. Through these accounts, each person’s particular needs can  met, from communicating privately with contacts of all kinds to subscribing to newsletters and registering on any internet platform.

Institutional Email

These are the email addresses use to represent an institution, organization, foundation or company. Generally, it is usually use to disseminate information to provide newsletters or information of interest to its clients, subscribers, or working personnel. At the same time, through this type of email address, people can send information or make inquiries to this type of institution.

Corporate Email

These email addresses allow communication between members of a company or corporation. Usually, this type of email is assign to the representatives of a corporation as a representative means that links them with the organization.

Temporary Mail

It is a type of email that few people know, which is also very useful. First, it is a service use exclusively to filter Spam sending. When we suspect that a website is of doubtful reliability, we can register by giving a temporary email; this is nothing more than an email that lasts minutes or hours, where we receive the information privately.

It is not necessary to register, enter passwords, or personal data. Therefore, the anonymity is total, but the security is zero. Therefore, the use of these types of emails must be exclude when we receive emails with 0 personal information

How Does it Work

Email works through an SMTP protocol (an acronym for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ), allowing information to  sent and receive through single-address emails through an Internet network. Thus, when a user sends an email to another, the whole system works as follows:

• When a sender sends an email, it connects to the SMTP server configured with your email account.
• Subsequently, once the mail is inside the SMTP server, an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) reads the recipient’s email address taking into account the domain of the address (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.), something that allows determining the destination to which the mail will  sent.
• Then, a query can made with the DNS (Domain Name System) server to identify the recipient’s email address.
• Once the recipient has been identify, the STMP server sends the mail to the respective server through the SMT P protocol.
• When the email address receives the email, it is host on its respective STMP server so that the user can access it through a web browser, IMAP or POP.

Parts of an Email

An email can made up of different elements. The following lines show what they are:

Inbox

It is where all emails received by an email address are store. These emails are usually fill in chronological order, although they can group into folders or tabs. Through this virtual space, a user can access the information contained in the emails they have received.

Spam or Junk Mail Box

It is the space destine to store unwanted email files, that is, those that could contain dangerous information, unwanted advertising or misleading offers. The email server automatically filters received emails and determines which emails should go to the spam box.

Outbox or Sent Items

It works the same way as the inbox. However, emails sent by the email address owner are archive in the outbox.

Addressee

The email address corresponds to the user to whom the mail can sent.

Business

It is a subject in which a description or title can written to the email sent. The issue is the appetizer that can  read from the inbox, distinguishing the reason for the message.

Body

It is the space for all the information that the email will contain.

Attachments

Attachments are the way to refer to files or additional information that is attach to the body of an email. Text files, images, compressed files, etc., can go in this place.

Conclusion

Electronic mail is a method of exchanging messages between people using electronic devices. An email was thus conceive as the electronic version of, or counterpart to, mail at a time when “mail” meant only physical mail.