NWE: Help: Email: Introduction

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Electronic mail is probably the most popular service the Internet allows. It's cheap, easy, fun, and even useful. If you've never used email before, read through the documents in this directory to learn more.

Email is older than the Internet. The first email systems were used to send mail from user to user on one computer. Then, as networks like ARPAnet developed, email became more popular. Compuserve and similar bulletin boards began to offer local and remote email as well.

You need a few things to use email:

Email account

Obviously you've got to have an email account and address to send and recieve mail. The NWE provides that. Your email address is 'username@nwe.ufl.edu'.

Destination address

Of course, you've got to have someone to send the mail to. That can be an email list, like your class list; a person, such as Mom (who else), or an automated program, like majordomo.

Client program

You don't really need a client program to send or read email--anyone can write data to sendmail or read the mail spool--but it's a lot easier to use a program designed for the task. The clients we use at the NWE are exmh (for lab access) and Pine (for remote access).

Server

An email server sends and receives mail for you. Our email server is mailhost.nwe.ufl.edu.

Most email is just text. Some email is 'enhanced' by the addition of HTML code or attachments. Both of these options require special clients.

Email is not very private. Email is more like a postcard than a letter--while a message is being sent, it's easy to see what's being written, who it's from, and who it's going to. Once a message gets to its destination, it's fairly secure.

If you want to enhance the privacy of your email, look into Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) public key encryption. It's free, and so secure the government has tried to outlaw it.