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EMAIL GLOSSARY
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General Email FAQ
"E-mail" or "email": Which is correct?
Both are correct. Since it stands for electronic mail, "e-mail" is considered to be more accurate. The use of the non-hyphenated form "email" has gained acceptance over the years and is more accepted now. It's just my personal preference.
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Where can I find free e-mail clients?
Search CNET for free e-mail tools for your operating system. Or search with Google.
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How do I find out what someone's e-mail address is?
The best way to find out someone's e-mail address is to ask them. There are quite a few search systems in the Web, here is a couple of them:
1. www.google.com
2. www.search.com
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What is a POP account?
POP (Post Office Protocol) is the protocol used by most e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. By default, all messages are downloaded to your computer and deleted from the server.
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What is an IMAP account?
An IMAP (Internet Messaging Access Protocol) account allows users to view and manipulate messages directly on the server without having to download them. IMAP provides multiple connections with simultaneous access to mailboxes, and allows users to request only portions of messages, such as headers or attachments. IMAP users can also create new folders in their mailboxes and move or copy messages between folders.
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What is the difference between POP and SMTP mail?
POP3 (Post Office Protocol, version 3) is a protocol that allows you to download your messages, when you want to, from a mailbox on a mail server (usually at your ISP) to your local machine using an e-mail client (such as Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Messenger etc).
SMTP simply sends messages to a server or routes them from one mail server to another.
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What causes access to POP3 mail to be slow?
There are several factors that can affect the speed of POP3 mail. These include, but are not limited to:
1. The number of messages in the mailbox, specifically the inbox. The more messages, the slower it is, due to the amount of data that must be read.
2. How often the POP3 client is set to retrieve new messages. If the previous session did not complete before a new session is initiated this will cause performance issues. The recommended 'check for new mail' setting should be set for 15 minute intervals.
3. The modem connection rate, if a modem is used.
4. The capabilities of the computer, such as processor speed, RAM, etc.
5. Traffic on the servers.
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Why have I been told that my inbox is too large (I use a POP client)?
One explanation is that the mail client is being run in "leave mail on server" mode. This means that instead of transferring messages to the user's system, only a copy of each message is transferred and a copy is left on the server. These remaining copies on the server cause the inbox to steadily increase. The recommendation is to deselect the "leave mail on server" settings.
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Why "pass phrase" is better then "password"?
This is because most people, when asked to choose a password, select simple common word. This can be cracked by a program that uses a dictionary to try out passwords on a system. Since most people really don't want to select a truly random password, where the letters and digits are mixed in a nonsense pattern, the term "pass phrase" is used to urge people to at least use several unrelated words in sequence as the pass phrase.
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Where is my e-mail kept?
Your e-mail is kept on a server until you make a connection and download it. Then the mail messages are stored on your computer.
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How do I recover my e-mail if my hard drive crashes?
If you have downloaded your e-mail from the system and set your e-mail software to delete mail from server, then your e-mail is lost. So, please, back up important messages. However, if you have choosen to leave e-mail on server, your e-mail will still be on the POP3 server. Then the problem is that all of your e-mail will be downloaded to you. It is best to configure your e-mail software and leave only the important messages on the server, or, as said above, just back up your important e-mail on another disk.
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What is "bulk e-mail"?
Bulk e-mail is a group of messages sent via email, with substantially identical content, to a large number of addresses at once. Many ISPs specify a threshold for bulk e-mail: 25 or more recipients within a 24-hour period.
Once again, taken by itself, bulk e-mail is not necessarily an abuse of the e-mail system. For example, there are legitimate mailing lists, some with hundreds or thousands of willing recipients.
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What is "e-mail harassment"?
Any message or series of messages sent via e-mail that meet the legal definition of harassment.
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What is a mailbomb?
It is the delivery of enough e-mail to a mailbox to overload the mailbox, or, perhaps, even the system that the mailbox is hosted on.
Mailbombs generally take one of the following forms. A mailbox might be targeted to receive hundreds or thousands of messages; this makes it difficult or impossible for the victim to use their own mailbox, possibly subjects them to additional charges for storage space, and might cause them to miss messages entirely due to overflow. This is seen as a denial-of-service attack, perhaps also harassment, and is not tolerated by any known service providers. Alternatively, a message will be bulk-emailed, with the intended victim's address forged in the "From:" and/or "Reply-To:" lines of the headers. The victim is then deluged with responses, mostly angry.
There is a third, particularly nasty, form of mailbomb. This one forges subscription requests to many mailing lists, all for one recipient. The result is a huge barrage of e-mail arriving in the victim's e-mail box, all of it unwanted but "legitimate". Many mailing list administrators are countering this form of abuse by sending a confirmation e-mail to each subscription request, which must be returned in order to be subscribed to the list.
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I've been mailbombed - what should I do?
Contact your ISP immediately. They can help to stop the inflow, and also help with tracking down the source of the mailbomb.
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How to send mail to more than one person?
For doing that, separate their e-mail addresses in the "To:", "Cc:", or "Bcc:" header (or a combination of all three) with commas (","). Do not use semicolons (";") to separate lists of e-mail addresses.
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What is e-mail forwarding/e-mail aliases?
E-mail aliases simply forward e-mail to an existing e-mail account. So, you could have me@mysite.com being forwarded to your_mailbox@yourISP.com, for example.
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What is SSL?
Secure Socket Layer is a secure protocol. SSL uses digital certificates, encoding algorithms, and private decoding keys to make sure your data is safe. The 128-bit SSL is considered safe enough for banks and financial institutions.
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What is SSL certificate and how does it work?
An SSL certificate contains the following information:
The domain name for which the certificate was issued.
The owner of the certificate and the domain name.
The physical location of the owner.
The validity dates of the certificate.
128 bit SSL certificate is a digital document that has unique codes to identify the holder of the 128 bit SSL certificate to the person accessing the server. Whenever anybody transacts with a "secure" server, their browser (or mailer) authenticates the identity of the server using the SSL CERTIFICATE.
If the server's SSL certificate is not valid, a warning is issued to the user, otherwise the SSL certificate creates an SSL session and encrypts any information exchanged during that session.
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How can one tell that a web-mail is secure?
The pages of a web-mail which are secured by SSL certificates are characterized by the following traits:
The URL of the secure web-pages changes from "http://..." to "https://...". A lock symbol appears in the lower left-hand (right hand) status bar in Netscape Navigator (Internet Explorer). If one wants to view and verify the encryption information of the secure pages, one should simply undertake the following:
In Netscape - click on the lock symbol described above and select "View Certificate" button
In Internet Explorer - double-click on the lock in the lower right-hand status bar.
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How do 128 bit SSL certificate work for different versions of browsers?
The specific browser recognition properties are outlined in the list below.
AOL Browser 6.x Fully supported
AOL Browser 7.x Fully supported
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x Fully supported
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01+ Fully supported
Netscape 6.X Fully supported
Netscape Navigator 4.51X and higher Fully supported
Opera 5 Fully supported
Opera 7 Fully supported
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Is 128 bit SSL certificate tied to any IP address?
No, server certificates do not contain any information about IP addresses.
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EMAIL TERMS
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Question of the Day
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