advantages The system is nearly universal because anyone who can access the Internet has an address. is fast because messages are generally delivered within a few minutes – sometimes a few seconds – after being sent. is convenient because you can send messages at any time of day, and your recipient does not need to be at his or her computer, or even connected to the Internet. is inexpensive because you do not have to pay to send messages, no matter where in the world you send them. You just need to pay a monthly subscription.

Hardware and software needed Apart from the essential computer system, which consists of a Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse and Central Processing Unit; other hardware peripherals can be attached to support with carrying out various tasks such as a digital camera to upload photographs. Q. Can you think of further desirable hardware and their usage? You can use an program to send and receive e- mail messages. Popular software programs include: ~ Windows Mail (in Windows Vista) ~ Outlook Express (in Windows XP) ~ Mail (in Mac OS X) ~ Outlook (in Microsoft Office)

How works When you send an message, it travels along your internet connection and then through your ISP’s outgoing mail server e.g. Virgin Media or BT Connect. (This is also called an SMTP server, the system that sends messages over the Internet). Q. Can you think of other ISP’s for both personal and business use? This server routes the message to the recipient’s incoming mail server (also often called a POP server), which then stores the message in his or her mailbox. The next time the recipient checks for messages, your message is moved from the recipient’s server to the recipient’s computer.

account To use , you must have an account, which is usually supplied by the ISP. The account gives you an address to which others can send messages. You can set up Web-based accounts with serves such as Hotmail.com and Yahoo.co.uk. A Web-based account is convenient because it enables you to send and receive messages from any computer. Q. Do you know what these domain suffixes represents?..ac,.com,.co.uk,.edu,.gov,.net,.org

Address book You can use your program’s address book to store the names and addresses of people with whom you frequently correspond. When you compose a message, you can then choose the recipients’ name from the address book, and the program automatically adds the contact’s address. This is both faster and more accurate than typing the address manually.

Organising yourself Each account is different for inputting calendar activities. For example, if you use a personal account like Hotmail. It looks like this: Example of a business account like Outlook: Investigate further organising and prioritising tasks that could be carried out from a personal or business account?

Subscribe to a mailing list Each mailing list has a list owner, which is the person or company that runs the mailing list. One of the list owner’s duties include maintaining the collection of subscribers, each of which is a personal or organisation that has provided the mailing list with an address. When the list owner or subscriber sends a message to the mailing list, a copy of the message is sent to each subscriber. This may require a small subscription fee. Many mailing lists are broadcast only, meaning that only the list owner can send messages. These types of mailing lists are often called newsletters. Many organisations have newsletters that you can sign up for and are free to join. Example: Offers Q. Can you think of further organisations you could sign up to?

Enhancing Security and Privacy Junk refers to any message of a commercial nature that is unsolicited. That is, if you never asked to receive messages from a company, or if you have no commercial dealings with a company in the recent past, then any commercial messages you receive from that company are classified as junk . Of the billions of junk messages sent each day, only a small fraction are delivered successfully, mostly because spammer address lists contain many invalid addresses. However, many ISP’s maintain special software called a junk e- mail filter that can detect spam and delete it before it gets delivered. Q. Can you identify types of junk mails received? Offensive, Product Pitches, Scams or Viruses and Phishing A Phishing message attempts to trick you into supplying confidential or sensitive data

Enhancing Security and Privacy Reduce Junk Do not open spam Do not respond to spam Disable images Invest in anti-spam software Guard against viruses Do not open attachments from strangers If a friend unexpectedly sends you a message with an attachment, do not assume the attachment is benign. Delete virus messages Invest in anti-virus software

Enhancing Security and Privacy Enhance privacy Set passwords Deny ‘read receipts’ Turn off ‘read receipts’ Encrypt your Safety precautions Use your common sense! Do not reveal your real name to unknown messages Never give out personal information such as your contact number and address to unknown messages Never divulge confidential information such as your credit card or national insurance number to unknown messages.

Handling troubleshooting Q. Why does my computer not open the file attachment? Instead of opening the file, your computer may display a dialog box telling you that the file “does not have a program associated with it.” This means you need to install the appropriate program for the type of file. If you are not sure, ask the person who sent you the file what program you need. What other troubleshooting questions can you solve?

Abbreviations defined ISP = Internet Service Provider POP = Post Office Protocol