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.

Resources:

TheTeachersGuide site Internet Safety http://www.theteachersguide.com/Internetsafety.html
The GetNetWise site about email http://kids.getnetwise.org/safetyguide/technology/email
The Council of Europe site on email Council of Europe Internet Literacy Handbook - Email