It is one of the oldest services on the modern Internet, which for decades has facilitated interaction, based on crossing text messages, between computer users from different continents.
Email is a digital service that allows computer users to send and receive messages with text content, as well as some added functionalities such as attaching files to messages.
Email is also known as e-mail or e-mail (the second less frequent form), by the abbreviation of electronic mail in English.
Although it is strictly not necessary for the computer to be on the network (we can send you a message e-mail to another user of the same system), and that the email service is used in another network other than the Internet, intuitively any of us identifies this service with the Internet and with the sending of messages to Internet users located in distant locations.
The history of e-mail dates back to the end of the sixties of the twentieth century, and the beginning of the seventies, when, based on previously existing services, a messaging service was implemented in the ARPANET network that would be erected in the precedent of e-mail current.
It is precisely at this time that the at symbol (@) begins to be used to separate and differentiate the username to which the message is addressed, from the name of the server where the mailbox to which it belongs is hosted. , a symbol that has become universal.
Email addresses are composed as follows:
For instance, [email protected] It would be a valid email address in its format (although I anticipate that it does not exist).
The use of the service is based on a series of programs, starting with a client in which we write the outgoing message, which is sent, once the user who writes it clicks on the exit button, through a mail agent installed on the output computer or on the server to which it connects.
In domestic Internet connections, the email service is usually provided by the same operator, although alternatively we can also subscribe to a free or paid service independent of the network connection provider.
This, as the main advantage, is that if we change our access provider, we will keep the mailbox regardless of our new company.
The email message is stored on the server that hosts the recipient's email mailbox after being directed to its destination through the Internet, and is retrieved and read once the user opens their mailbox.
Initially, the email, in text format, required an application installed on the local machine.
Then came the graphical environments and, with them, the graphical clients for the e-mail and, finally, the services of webmail that allow mail to be managed through a web interface, whose main exponents are Hotmail / Outlook and Gmail.
E-mail also reached mobile phones years ago, with dedicated applications and services.
Among what allows us to do this long-standing service, we have the attachment of files, reply to messages, and forward them.
Attaching files allows us to use email to send photos, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, or even complete programs.
The response allows us to write an email directly in response to another without having to re-enter the recipient's address, having the original wording in case we want to quote it.
Similarly, we can send a message to multiple recipients, respond to multiple recipients, or forward a message to a third person.
Although at different times a substitute for e-mail has been sought, initially thinking about voice messages, until now nothing and no one has been able to overshadow this fundamental Internet service, except perhaps IP messaging.
Applications for smartphones and desktop computers such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram or Hangouts, are the first to have overshadowed email, but with no real danger of substituting it, since users choose them for different purposes and different ways of communicating.
For its part, one of the great problems encountered by this technology is the amount of spam or "junk mail" which is sent and received per day. This means that an average user is likely to receive a lot of spam on a daily basis.
