Introduction to Email Jan 24 th 2010
Email Need special software (called email-reader or emailclient) to connect to the email-server and download the emails Email-server has limited space for each user account Email can be stored on the email-server or your computer Advantage: Can read email even when there is no Internet connection! Example of email readers: MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, Mozilla Thunderbird Example of email server: MS Exchange Server, Lotus Domino
Web Mail Web-based Email Email is saved on website not on your computer! Advantage: Can access the email from any computer in the world that has a web browser & Internet! Advantage: Simple and Free! Paid for by Advertisements Examples: Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.
Getting started with Gmail Creating an account Log-in Sign-out
Login Name This is the name of your email account We created two test accounts: yam2010a@gmail.com yam2010b@gmail.com No one else can be using the same login name Check Availability tells you if the name you selected is available
Password Password prevents others from accessing your email Choose a Password that is hard to guess Bad passwords: password or abc123 Gmail requires password to be 8 characters Don t forget your password!
Security Question If you forget your password (or someone hacks into your account!), security question and recovery email can be used to reset your password Make sure you remember the answer to the security question! Make sure to provide a correct recovery email address If not, it is very hard to recover an email account!
Getting started with Gmail Creating an account Log-in Sign-out
Getting started with Gmail Creating an account Log-in Sign-out
Exercise: Create a new Gmail Account!
Once you receive an email, you can: Delete it Mark it as SPAM Mark it as READ Move it to a folder/ tag it Folder is not on your computer! It is on the web site But first we need to select the emails!
Click here to Delete selected email messages
Click here to report messages as SPAM
Click here to select Mark as Read
Click here to move selected emails to a folder
Exercise: Delete the three emails
Sending an email
1) Compose the Message Type Recipient's email address here Type Subject here Type Message here
2) After composing Press Send to send the email
2) After composing Can save the email into to Drafts folder
2) After composing Can throw away or discard the message
To, CC, BCC?? To: Primary recipients Cc: Carbon copy to secondary recipients other interested parties Bcc: Blind carbon copy to recipients who receive the message without others, including the To: and Cc: recipients, seeing who else received it.
Respond to an email using Reply
Use Forward to send this email to another person
Practical: Sending an email
Spam Spam means Junk Email Unlike physical mail, email is virtually costless to send. Unfortunately, this creates an incentive for spammers to send millions of junk emails a day. If one person in 100,000 responds to their email, they become rich Spamming is illegal in the US. Unfortunately, they often run their operation in counties with lax laws
Spam Filters Gmail (and every other email system) has a Spam filter Software automatically guesses which emails are spam. It does make mistakes! Sometimes, the Spam filter will let a junk mail through You can report it as Spam to help improve the filter in the future Sometimes, good emails are classified as junk If someone said they sent you an email and you don t see it for several hours, look in the spam folder
Email Attachment Can send a file (e.g. pictures, Word Documents, Powerpoint presentation) along with an email Most email systems limit the size of attachments Gmail currently has a 25MB limit for file size Good idea not to exceed 10MB for attachment because (a) you are filling up the receiver s email space and (b) their email system might not allow large attachments
Tips on Attachments Never open an attachment from someone you don t trust! You will most likely get a computer viruses from opening an untrusted attachment If the computer of the person you trust is hacked, they can send you a virus attachment without even knowing it! My suggestion: only open attachments if you are expecting it E.g. Baby pictures after the birthday E.g. Powerpoint slides from the computer class If in doubt, ask the sender Did you mean to send this attachment?
Practical: Sending an email with an attachment