Learning the Ropes Series:
Internet for the Easily Intimidated
Part 1: Email
Synopsis:
Computers can be used on the internet to send and receive email and documents, but there are many more uses for the internet beyond what people normally see. These articles will open your eyes to some of the latest uses for the Internet, as well as to help establish a solid base of knowledge about how your computer should be used when online.
Part 1 looks at Email, how it works, what programs you need to use it, and ways to protect yourself from email problems such as spam, viruses, and phishing exploits.
If you buy a new computer, chances are good that it's going to be exposed to the internet almost out of the box. In fact, it's becoming clear that people now buy computers solely to get online. Gone are the days of standalone applications and single-person gaming; now you can chat live with friends and family, invite a group of friends to join you in an adventure, or even ditch your land-line phone service and use your broadband account to call anywhere in the world for half the price!
In fact, there are so many internet-based applications available that people become overwhelmed with the possibilities. The problem is that, in order to simplify their lives, new users (and often grizzled ones alike) put on virtual blinders to the options they have available to them, often missing the truly unique and helpful uses for their computers in the meantime.
Let's take away some of those blinders! I'm going to remove a bit of the mystique behind the services you probably use, and open your eyes to some truly useful and entertaining ones as well. No longer will you want to use your computer to "surf the internet"; I'm going to teach you how to go spelunking instead, delving deep into the bowels of the internet instead of riding just along the surface.
Email.
If there were one reason people buy computers today, it would overwhelmingly be to send and receive electronic mail. Be it for home or work purposes, email is a part of our lives now; I wonder how I'd ever do business without it!
Most people who buy a computer and get set up with an internet service provider (ISP for short) are given instructions on how to set up their email "client", a program which is used to send, receive and store emails and contact lists. Once the hard part's done, the programs are pretty easy to figure out. Click the "Write" or "Compose" button, add an address to send to, add a subject line, and fill out the actual meat of the email, then click the "Send" button to ship it off to the recipient. But underneath it all, more is happening than just an instruction for the email to "Go forth".
It "just works" when your chosen email client (such as Outlook, Mail.app, Evolution, or Thunderbird) is set up with the correct settings for your service's email servers. Ingoing and outgoing server names, your account name and password are all the basics you need to tell the program. If there's more that's needed (authentication settings, special outgoing ports), your email service provider will provide you with that information.
Email is processed by a series of servers which direct traffic, scan for viruses, filter out unsolicited junk emails (spam), and store emails for download or viewing by the intended recipient. Here's an analogy: modern airport security…
Person orders a ticket = sender writes an email
Person purchases the ticket = sender sends the email
Person gets directions to airport = email gets routed through DNS and MX record server to correct location of recipient's registered email service
Person arrives at airline check-in = email arrives at mail server
Person goes through a security checkpoint = email server checks incoming email for spam and viruses
Person boards plane = email is stored in virtual mailbox of recipient
Person arrives at destination = email is downloaded / read by intended recipient
You don't need to memorize all of those steps, just as you don't need to know how the US Postal Service processes your regular mail. Just as long as it works, right?
There are two ways to read your emails: download them to your computer, or read them online via a web-based email site. Downloading them (or pulling them from the internet) to your computer requires an email client program. You should also have an anti-virus program installed which checks incoming and outgoing emails automatically, and you may want an anti-spam program or filter system installed to sort through any junk spam (unsolicited email advertising).
A better way to get your emails is to use an online web-mail system, if it's provided for you. Services such as Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and G-mail (Google's new mail service) allow you to read your emails using a web browser. This is useful because you don't need to set up any email program with all of those weird settings, and you can read your email on ANY computer which is connected to the internet (such as those at work, or your aunt's PC, or even your cellphone if it's wirelessly able to reach the internet). Many ISPs now have a web-mail site available to use (I know Comcast, Charter, and SBC/Yahoo! do, and many smaller players as well).
One big benefit of the web-mail system is that the service provider is generally doing the scanning for viruses, and many of them sort out spam for you as well (generally moving those emails to a "Bulk" or "Junk" folder for you to sift through later). The only real downfall of this system is that your emails are only available to you if you're online; if you're on a dialup at home, and you're disconnected and need to view an email you received last week with directions to someone's house, you'll need to hop online and view or print it.
Most users of email accept its extreme usefulness, but few protect their email with regular backups. For those who use a strictly web-based email system, it's no big deal, but if you download your emails to a single computer, you're erasing them from the server at the same time. That means the only copy of your emails is residing on your computer's hard drive, a piece of metal and plastic with a disk spinning at a minimum of 4200RPM and an arm and "needle" swinging back and forth at speeds which the eye can't easily follow. It is the one part of the computer which is most likely to break down in less than three years; you should never trust that it'll work past tomorrow!
Backup your email to CD, DVD, another hard drive, a network-based backup service, ANYTHING, as long as you regularly back it up! Don't know how? Emails are stored in relatively standard locations on your computer, but finding them is often difficult; multiple user accounts on a single computer compound the problem. I'd like to chastise the programmers of email programs for not giving users an easy "BACKUP" option or button to make it happen! Here are a few useful programs which help do backups for certain clients:
Outlook Express Backup -- $39.95 is a bit much for a backup program which is this specialized but it's great piece-of-mind if you want it to "just work". 30-day trail version is available. For Outlook Express users only (not Outlook)
BackupOutlook -- $29.95, made for Outlook 97-2003 specifically, decent program, trial download available, also backs up Internet Explorer settings, and is scriptable from the command line (for pro users)
BackupOutlookExpress -- $29.95, made specifically for Outlook Express 4.0 - 6.0, trial download available, also backs up Internet Explorer settings
AMICUtilities OE Backup -- $39.50 (US approx., it's a European site so there's EURO conversion to worry about) seems steep, but it backs up MULTIPLE clients including Eudora and Netscape Mail as well as Outlook Express. Trial download available
Argentuma Backup -- $25, very simple interface. Backs up most email clients on PCs, and has templates you can load in to backup other types of data such as My Documents folders, AIM/ICQ/MSN chat settings, etc.; trial download available
MozBackup -- FREE, but the programmer has decided to discontinue further development. He will be releasing the source code shortly, though, so it will definitely get picked up by someone else! It backs up Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird profiles with little fanfare; it's another one of those "it just works" kind of apps.
If you're more knowledgable about your system, here are a few sites with great backup tutorials to help manually backup your email data, at no cost:
http://www.sitedeveloper.ws/tutorials/outlook.htm -- Outlook and Outlook Express backup tutorials, with pictures!
http://www.argentuma.com/backup/email-backup.html -- Backup Outlook, OE, Mozilla, Thunderbird, or Netscape emails manually; here's where everything's located
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird… -- Detailed info on backing up Mozilla Thunderbird profiles / email data
If you're intent on downloading your emails to your computer, consider using an email application other than Outlook Express (on Windows machines). OE is agruably the most security-lax email program in existence; if you insist on using it, make sure you install ALL Windows Update patches for it and for Internet Explorer (the two are linked together very closely), and turn off the Preview Pane (under the Views menu option) in OE. Also, be certain your anti-virus application is set up to check emails for OE (some don't work right with it, others don't set it up by default).
Following are a few different email applications you can download for different platforms:
Mozilla Thunderbird -- available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux; based on original Netscape Mail code, it's been cleaned up, made easier to use, and has a brilliant Bayesian spam filter system which learns as you use it more. FREE
Eudora Email - available for Windows and Mac OS X; long-time player in the email client field, highly rated. Now includes anti-spam filtering and anti-phishing scan! FREE version available (runs in "supported" mode showing some ads, though it's not adware-supported) or purchase for $49.95 to get rid of ads
Incredimail -- available for Windows only; if you're into flashy presentation over substance, this is the client for you! However, be aware that it sends tons of bloated graphics files with each email you send, which could make others who receive your emails perturbed (I would be)… FREE (WARNING: Adware supported, will probably break if you run any adware/spyware removal tools)
Novell Evolution -- currently available only for Linux distributions, though a Windows version is in the works; it's the Outlook killer for Linux. Includes email and groupware support, calendar features, anti-spam filters, and full Palm PDA sync. FREE (included with most GNOME-based Linux distributions)
KMail -- The KDE Email Client, available as part of the KDE Desktop for Linux, BSD, Solaris, and Mac OS X (via X11); it's solid, quick, small, and does the job. Not fancy, but has most of the features of the larger Evolution client, sans Exchange server support. FREE (installs as part of "kdepim" package, which gives it Palm PDA sync capabilities)
PINE -- (Program for Internet News & Email), available for all UNIX variations, including BSD, Linux and Mac OS X. This is as simple as you can get with email! Fully command-line based, no graphic user interface (throw out your mouse, it's no good here). FREE
If your chosen email client doesn't come with spam filtering abilities, you can usually add a program or service to supply it. Just about the only one which DOESN'T now is Outlook Express (Windows). You can check out the following applications to add it in:
SpamFighter -- for Outlook / Outlook Express; comes downloadable in Pro version (good for one month), then you either pay $29 to keep the Pro version or downgrade it to Standard (FREE), but it drops some features (but not many, the differences are here).
Cloudmark SafetyBar -- (formerly SpamNet), for Outlook / Outlook Express; similar to SpamFighter, you join a "group" of people who mark emails they receive as spam (if they really are), and the list is sent to be shared with other users of the SafetyBar. At $39.95 per year (yearly subscription needed to continue using the product) it's a bit steep for what it provides.
MailFrontier Matador - for Outlook / Outlook Express; very good spam filtering (Bayesian and blacklist/whitelist based) and anti-phishing included. At $29.95, it's probably the easiest to use filter around, and it works very well.
All-In-One Secretmaker - for Outlook / Outlook Express / Eudora; has the stupidest sounding name, and an ugly user interface, but A) it's completely FREE (no adware or spyware), B) it's one of the highest-rated, most downloaded solutions on the net (according to SnapFiles.com and Download.com), and C) it provides great filtering IN ADDITION TO many other privacy features for not only email but surfing as well! FREE
Stay tuned for more in this series…
