Email Tutorial

Deleted User said 3 years, 1 month ago:

Email seems to be one of those things that gives everybody trouble. I am always amazed at how much trouble it gives friends, family, customers, just about everybody I know.

Then it dawned on me, most of the time the problems are because people don’t know the limitations of what they are using. Like trying to use a wrench as a hammer.

I took it upon myself to write a short tutorial. It was about 10 pages long! So every week I’ll post the next phase in here.

First:
• What is an email

We are going to tackle the task of making email more understandable and easier for you to use. Some of the questions people have about email are as follows

Question #1, what is an email message?
Question #2, what or HOW can you read this email?
Question #3, how is a message moved or sent to me?

OK
Question #1:
What is an email? It is very much like a real physical letter. If you think of it as a physical thing some of this makes more sense. A common US Postal letter consists of a wrapper, called an envelope, a body, and sometimes attachments.

** Envelope first:
A USPS envelop has three items that are typically on it. The ‘FROM’ or Sender; the ‘TO’ or Recipients, and the ‘AUTHENTICATION’ or Stamp.

An email has the same items that exist but we don’t often see them. These can be broken up as such.

Sender – From = Pretty clear who sent you that particular email. (See Spam note below)

Recipients – To = Again pretty clear, that’s you! We are sending YOU an email. For now consider only You@Domain.Com as the whole ‘To’ address. We will break it down in another article.

Authentication – Rights to send an email. With snail-mail a postal stamp gives you the right to expect delivery, you did pay for this. In the Email or digital world we usually log in or authenticate first, before the sent message is accepted by the sending server. This feature is not implemented everywhere but is becoming more prevalent in the current computer environments we live in. When you first log into or onto an email system, you are providing a username and password to the Sending email server. Again think of this as buying a stamp, or a way of proving authentication. Yes people can get around that, but people can get around stamps as well. We are not talking about stealing here, just getting you some good basic knowledge.

** Body of the Letter:
Like a normal ‘Business style letter’ each email also contains a repeat of the Who sent it or Sender. A repeat of the Who Is It addressed to, and the basic body or text of the letter.
In the body of an email there is a field or area that is defined as FROM.
Think of a real letter for just a moment. Is there any reason on god’s green earth I can’t address the envelop of a letter to you, then on the inside of the letter put a completely different person on the “To” line of the paper that is the letter? Nope happens all the time. Well that’s one of the ways you get emails addressed to Sally SillyMan and your name is Bob Smyrak. It’s also one of the ways Spam gets sent to you. The envelope of a real letter is disconnected from the piece of paper inside a real letter. Email is no different. There is a block, blob, area of the binary 1’s and 0’s that is set aside to be called, the Envelope. And that’s why sometimes you will get emails addressed to somebody other than you.
The body of any old business Letter is pretty much like the body of a typical email. Somebody typed it out and it is the same it’s the bulk of what we send and receive.

** Attachments and Pictures:
Go back to our real letter example. If you receive a letter from Great Aunt Sally from her motorcycle trip to the hills of South Dakota she may have included a photo graph. It’s not part of the envelope, and it’s not part of the actual letter, it’s inside the envelope. The Envelope is just a way to carry the picture right.
Digitally when we send email there is a completely separate block or blob of 1’s and 0’s set aside for any attachments. You can send a picture without an email, just as you can snail mail a picture with no email words. It can be confusing to the person who receives it, so we include words. Like “Hi Scott this is your great Aunt Sally here. You can see we finally made it to Mt Rushmore in South Dakota.”

That is how an email is both like a letter and different from a letter. Are you asleep yet? OK let’s go on.

sd3 said 3 years ago:

Great information!