The path of an email from sender to receiver is unpredictable – delays, detours, blockages and disbelieving guards. Yet still, they make it through the numerous communications links, mail servers, routers and all the other stuff that makes up the World Wide Web. Getting email from one place to another demonstrates one of the main objectives of the founders of the internet – resilience in the face of unreliable or damaged technology.
Our day-to-day confidence in email is at such a high level that it can come as quite a shock when we find out that someone sent us an email which never arrived. Sod's Law dictates that this only happens to very important or very urgent emails, of course. Yet the reality is that email is fundamentally insecure and easily disrupted.
The adventures of E. Mail begin in the email “client” or application. Someone sits in front of their computer (or, increasingly, thumbs the email into their mobile all-in-one phone/camera/radio/PDA) and crafts their communique as they wish. After this gestation period, E. Mail is born at the press of the “Send” button and is immediately transferred to the Outgoing queue. Life at home is short ; if the computer has a dialup modem link, it may be a few minutes before E. Mail is kicked out into the big world, but for many computers with always-on connections, there's barely time to draw first breath.
First stop is the computer's mail server, or SMTP account. Here, the local electronic “post office” first checks that E. Mail is coming from a valid customer and not some stranger trying populate the world with its spam-filled offspring for free. Once accepted, the mail server looks at where E. Mail is going to, consults its lists of “people that know things”, and then asks one of them if they will be able to look after E. Mail and pass it on down the line to other “people that know things” unit it arrives at the recipient’s mail server.
Along this pathway (which may change for each email sent), E. Mail may be subject to regular searches for viruses and other nasty items by the internet police, and may also be carefully cross-examined by bouncers asking where it came from, who sent it, where it’s going, and what its parents phone number is (or the internet equivalents of them). Anything suspicious, and E. Mail may be sent back home, slammed in jail, or even ‘disappeared’. All along, E. Mail is open to public view, and naive enough to tell anyone that asks what message it carries.
Finally arriving at the destination mail server, E. Mail is put into a holding pen along with everyone else heading for the recipient. There they patiently wait, until the recipient opens up their own email application, and finally, E. Mail gets to step into the glorious light of the Inbox, ready for its own individual attention. But not without the final indignity (if the recipient is sensible) of a thorough frisk for illegal items such as Trojans, and a check to see if E. Mail is worthy enough to enter the final door and contains a message that the recipient may actually want to read – many anti-spam protectors apply a wide range of rules & regulations, and these guys will not listen to persuasive arguments. If the wrong word or phrase or structure is found, E. Mail is out!
And yet, our Inboxes continue to fill with emails…
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