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Technology
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Email
What
is Email?
Electronic
mail (email) is the sending of a text file from one piece
of equipment (PC, laptop, PDA, or cell phone) to another.
The transfer time is measured in seconds and one message
can go to one address or to a large number of addresses.
Email is a very useful form of communication and, compared
to traditional mail service, is extremely fast and significantly
cheaper. Because the email recipient can read an email when
it is convenient, it is less intrusive than a telephone
call which demands immediate attention. Email
may be located on your computer or may be web based. If
it is on your computer, you must be at your computer to
check and read it. If it is web based, you may use any Internet
capable computer to check and read it. Email has many similarities
to real mail. You have a mailbox (i.e. Outlook, Hotmail
inbox, etc.). You write the letter and send it. When you
send it (or mail it), it goes to a mail server, which is
like the post office. The mail server looks at the address
and sends it to the person you mailed it to. Their mail
server keeps it until they log in to check their mail. At
that time, their mail server delivers it to them. They may
open it and read it, read it later, or just delete it.
Dangers:
Email,
like the other forms of communication on the Internet, is
a faceless form of communication. Many social cues are absent
when using a text based communication and misunderstandings
can easily arise. It is important to be careful and clear
when communicating in this fashion. Emoticons
are often used to add an emotional expression to the message.
Emails
can be spoofed, which means they have a false return address
and because of this you will not know who really sent the
email. Email can contain unsolicited messages trying to
sell you or your child some kind of product. This
is known as spam. Most ISP's are working to provide spam
filtering so that their customers are not constantly exposed
to messages that are unwanted and frequently inappropriate.
If you receive spam, do not click on the link to remove
your email address from the mailing list, this, in many
cases, only assures the spammers that yours is a valid address
and you will receive even more spam.
The
most common way to acquire a computer virus is through email
attachments. It is important to not open unexpected attachments.
Insteadm just delete them. Even if you know the person who
has sent you an attachment it is important to check it with
antivirus software before opening it.
Social engineering is the attempt to trick, fool or manipulate
someone into giving out personal information. Social engineering
using email is called "phishing." A phishing email
looks and sounds official and requests that you click on
a link and go to a secure Web page to update your personal
information. The link will take you to a site that looks
authentic. The deception is that the
information is not actually sent to the location you were
led to believe. The information solicited may include
credit card numbers, a social security number, a bank account
number, or passwords. This can lead to identity theft which
not only can take years to resolve but can result in a financial
crisis.
Another
danger is that predators will use email to contact their
potential victims, and emails may be used in cases of Cyberbullying
to harass an individual.
A
further danger is in forwarding an email (see
image). It is an excellent way for someone to collect
the email addresses of many similar types of individuals.
One predator sent out a questionnaire with instructions
to forward it. Eventually it came back to him with a list
of email addresses of young boys and their responses to
his questions. He made contact with several before he was
caught. To avoid exposing the email address of the people
you are sending email to, you should use the BCC (Blind
Carbon Copy) feature. The first step is to cut and paste
the content from the original message into a new message.
Then address the email to be sent to yourself. Add the intended
recipients to the BCC line. To use BCC
with Outlook you may have to go to the View menu and select
the Bcc field. When the email is sent, the only address
that appears is yours.
