Electronic mails (Emails)

What is Email?

 A mail, but is sent electronically

across the Internet.
 Quickly delivered in seconds or
minutes (if without problem).
Telephone E-mail Post
Speed High Moderate Low
Synchronized Yes No No
Formality Varies Moderate Varies
Conferencing Small Group Any to all One-way only
Security Moderate Low High

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Pros & Cons

 Advantages
– Convenience, Fast speed, Inexpensive, Printable,
Reliable, Global, Generality (not limited to text,
but graphics, programs, even sounds)
 Disadvantages
– Misdirection, Interception, Forgery, overload,
Funk (Spamming), No response (from the
receiver).
 Think one good and one bad experience
that you have had with email.
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Email address

 What you need is

– The E-mail address of the recipient.

– user@host
– [email protected]
– [email protected]

 "cse.cuhk.edu.hk" is the domain name of the

mail server which handles the recipient's mail.
 “cccheung" is the user name of the recipient.
 User name and hostname are separated by "@".
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Email server and client

 Email client – software / program that

can transfer e-mail from a local host to
a local e-mail server.
 Email server – software/program that
can send/receive e-mail from/to other
email servers.
 Mailbox – An electronic mailbox is a
disk file which holds email messages.
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Email Software (Client)

 Graphical Client (User friendly)

 Outlook

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Email Software (Client)
 Text mode (UNIX - mailserv, logic server)
 mutt pine

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Email Software (Server)
 Install the mail server on Linux/Unix or Windows platform.

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Cc & Bcc

 Carbon Copy Section

– Send a message to more than one
person, all the recipients will see the list
of email addresses.
 Blind Carbon Copy Section
– The addresses won’t be seen by the
recipients.
– When email is sent to a large group of
people who don’t know each other.

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Attachment – MIME
Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extension

 A protocol for transmitting non-text information

across the Internet. Basically, non-ASCII data is
converted to ASCII for transmission and then
converted back at the receiver.
 A specification for automatically sending
objects other than text in email messages.
 MIME is usually associated with multimedia,
such as images, audio recordings, and movies.
 Additional hardware and helper software are
usually required.
 Common MIME-compliant mailers:
– pine, metamail, Netscape messenger, MS Outlook
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Common MIME Types
Type Subtype Description File extensions
Application postscript Printable postscript document .eps, .ps
text TEX document .tex
Audio midi Musical Instrument Digital Interface .midi, .mid
realaudio Progressive Networks sound .ra, .ram
wav Microsoft sound .wav
Image gif Grapical Interchange Format .gif
jpeg Joint Photographic Experts Group .jpeg, .jpg, .jpe
png Portable Network Graphics .png
Model vrml Virtual Reality Modeling Language .wrl
Text html Hypertext Markup Language .html, .htm
plain Unformatted text .txt
Video avi Microsoft audio video interleaved .avi
mpeg Moving Picture Experts Group .mpeg, .mpg
quicktime Apple QuickTime movie .qt, .mov

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How
does
email
works?

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SMTP
 E-mails are transferred across the Internet via
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
 The mail server uses SMTP to determine how to
route the message through the Internet and
then sends the message.
 When the message arrives at the recipient's
mail server, the message is transferred to a
POP3 server. POP stands for Post Office
Protocol.
 The POP server holds the message until the
recipient retrieves it with his/her email software.
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SMTP illustration
Mary’s computer
John’s computer

SMTP Internet

SMTP SMTP

Mail server Mail server

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POP

 Advantages
– Don’t have to know the name of your machine
– POP mail server is installed on a computer
always ON
– Use Windows interface to read email
 Disadvantages
– The email at the mail server is popped to your
local machine
 Refer to notes page for more explanations

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POP illustration
Mary’s computer
John’s computer
Local
inbox

SMTP Internet POP

SMTP SMTP

Mail
spool
Mail server Mail server

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IMAP
 Another popular method by which users obtain their emails is
called a central mail spool.
 Imagine what could happen if Peter where reading emails at his
office while his wife was simultaneously trying to read from the
same inbox from home.
 Lots of complication can arise in this scenario, and a protocol has
been designed to handle many of the relevant issues. It's called the
Interactive Mail Access Protocol (IMAP).
 Peter's emails remain on his mail server. The emails are not
brought over to the computer from which he is working. That is,
leaving the emails in a central location, and allowing access of the
emails from several places.
 That is, when Peter wants to read his emails, he must send a
password to the mail server to authenticate himself.
 Another advantage of IMAP is that it encrypts passwords so that
someone sniffing the network cannot directly obtain his password.

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IMAP illustration
John’s office computer
John’s home computer

IMAP link
IMAP link
Incoming/
Outgoing emails

John
inbox

Mail server (SMTP/IMAP)

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How to setup IMAP in
Outlook Express?
Select the correct Protocol

POP email
HTTP email
IMAP email

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Web-based e-mail - HTTP
 Can deliver mail message in web page format.
 More reliable to use POP and IMAP than HTTP mail account.

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Bounced back email
 Bad user account name
 Bad domain name
 Domain name server is down for several days
 Some other malfunction (email too big)

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Junk Mails

 How can they get into your mailbox?

– From name card, letter heads, published papers.
– Use search engine in the newsgroup, bulletin
boards, phone books.
– Dump a full user list in a server.
 How to stop the intrusion of Junk Mails?
– Mail server providers joint effort
– Filtering
– Preview before downloading

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SPAM
 SPAM is flooding the Internet with many copies of
the same message
– Force to send message to people
– Junk electronic mail.
 Why cause problem?
– Cost-shifting – very cheap to send thousands of emails
– Fraud – not an advertisement subject
– Waste of others’ resources – stealing bandwidth
– Displacement of Normal Email – destroy the usefulness
and effectiveness of email
– Ethics problem

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Anti - SPAM

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References

 Discussion – handouts
– SPAM & Chinese DNS
 Internet FAQ Archives
 How USENET protocol works?
 http://email.about.com/

 The End.
 Thank you for your patience!
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