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FUNDAMENTALS OF INFORMATION The Modernization of Digital Information

TECHNOLOGY: Textbook – English Technology

1-1-2023

Chapter 11 Email
Shambhavi Roy

Clinton Daniel
University of South Florida, [email protected]

Manish Agrawal
University of South Florida, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/dit_tb_eng

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Roy, Shambhavi; Daniel, Clinton; and Agrawal, Manish, "Chapter 11 Email" (2023). FUNDAMENTALS OF
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: Textbook – English. 11.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/dit_tb_eng/11

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Email

CHAPTER CONTENTS
Overview 216
Email Origins 216
Email Impacts 217
Email Technologies 217
Mail Clients 218
Desktop Mail Clients 219
Mobile Mail Clients 219
Receiving, Creating, and Forwarding Mails 220
Organizing Email into Folders 225
Mail Labels 225
Mailing Lists 226
Mail Filters and Rules 226
Managing Signatures 228
Email Sensitivity, Security, and Delivery Options 230
Email Contacts 232
Automated Messages 232
Using Calendars to Schedule Meetings and Tasks 234
Email Security 238
Phishing Attacks 239
Spear Phishing 239
Emails Don’t Go Away 240
Chapter Terms and Definitions 241
Chapter Case: I’m Admitted to USF! 2431

Chapter 11—Email 215

 To not have an email address is the digital equivalent of being homeless. Without it
you can’t shop online, bank online or engage with social media.

—Dela Quist, email marketing leader and founder of Alchemy Worx

Overview
Email is the method of sending, receiving, and organizing messages using a computer. Barely a few
decades ago, the only way to send messages and documents was to mail them physically at the post
office (or use courier services like FedEx and UPS). Email transformed the way we communicate. It
allows us to send and receive messages and documents instantaneously, regardless of the physical
location of the sender or the receiver. Along with services like instant messaging and video calling,
email spurred global e-commerce by breaking geographical barriers and allowing friends and family
to stay in touch on a day-to-day basis for little to no cost. To mail a letter through the postal service,
you needed to write the letter or take a printout of the letter, put it in an envelope, attach stamps, and
write the mailing address on the envelope. If you have access to a smart phone or computer, email is
much easier. You only need to know the email address of the person you want to email, then type the
message, and include any documents you want to attach to the message. Clicking the “Send” button
will instantly transfer the email from your inbox to the receiver’s inbox, while you continue to work
on your computer.
Email is critical for students and adults in the modern world. As a high schooler, you probably receive
important notifications from your school and are required to submit assignments through email.
These days, most job applications are sent and received through email because email not only helps
deliver information and documents but also serves as a permanent record of your interactions. When
you shop online for clothes or use food delivery services, you may get an email or a text message that
you can refer to for details or in case of a disagreement with the other party. A critical feature of email
compared to instant messaging is that emails are stored in virtual mailboxes, and have the advantage
of never getting lost, unless deleted deliberately. In most cases, depending on your email provider,139
you will be able to restore even deleted messages from the Trash folder for a period of time.

Email Origins
Message passing was one of the first uses of computers. The earliest electronic communication systems
were like leaving a note on a user’s desk. Users could leave a message in a specific folder on another
user’s computer, who could then open the message at their convenience.140 When the Internet became
available, users wanted to send messages to anyone connected to a computer. This introduced the
need for consistent ways of doing several things such as identifying computers, identifying users on
computers, and packaging messages. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson used the “@” symbol already available
on computer keyboards to create the simple “user@computer” convention for identifying users and

139 Even after you delete email, service providers go through a detailed process to ensure the email
is deleted from all their servers. Google’s policies are described at, “How Google Retains Data We
Collect,” https://policies.google.com/technologies/retention (accessed June 2023).
140 Ian Peter, “The History of Email,” Net History, http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20
the%20Internet/email.html (accessed June 2023).

216 Chapter 11—Email

computers, a convention that lives on to this day.141 In 1973, Tomlinson142 co-authored RFC 561,143 a
simple three-page document that standardized the email fields we still use today, such as “FROM,”
“SUBJECT.” In 2011, on the occasion of MIT’s 150th anniversary, The Boston Globe rated Tomlinson the
fourth most significant inventor from MIT.144
As email gained popularity, accounting for as much as 75% of all Internet traffic in the early days,
protocols and applications emerged to make it easier for users to send and receive email. This chapter
describes these applications in detail.

Email Impacts
The popularity of email is based on its unique ability to meet the human need to communicate.145
Email has even had significant impact on the business world. The dot-com boom of 2000, one of the
greatest financial manias of all time, can be associated with email. In one of the best-known books on
market manias,146 author Charles Kindleberger has attributed the dot-com bubble to email and related
technologies. The book states that “events that lead to a [financial] crisis start with a ‘displacement,’
some exogenous, outside shock to the macroeconomic system.” In other words, a financial mania
begins with some unanticipated event that has great economic impact. Further, to describe the dot-
com mania, the book states that “the shock in the United States in the 1990’s was the revolution in
information technology and new and lower-cost forms of communication and control that involved
the computer, wireless communication and email.” The popular adoption of email led to an entire
financial bubble!

Email Technologies
Email uses a combination of technologies to work. End users use software called mail clients to read
and write email and manage their mailboxes. Service providers use software called mail servers to
store and deliver emails on behalf of end users. We discuss email clients and their use in this chapter.

141 Google paid homage to this creative use of the “@” symbol on Oct 29, 2021 in “As Email Turns
50, the @ Symbol Continues to Fuel Collaboration,” https://workspace.google.com/blog/
productivity-collaboration/celebrating-50-years-of-email (accessed June 2023).
142 Internet Hall of Fame on Ray Tomlinson, https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/
raymond-tomlinson/. The four-minute video on the page is worth watching, https://youtu.be/
kJp0NHkBIAY (both accessed June 2023).
143 Abhay Bhushan, Ken Pogran, Ray Tomlinson and Jim White, RFC 561, “Standardizing Network
Mail Headers,” https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc561 (accessed June 2023).
144 “MIT 150,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT150 (accessed June 2023).
145 As an example, most of the gadgets shown in Star Trek focused on communication, Sarah
Kessler, “8 Star Trek Gadgets That Are No Longer Fiction,” https://mashable.com/archive/star-
trek-gadgets (accessed June 2023).
146 C.P. Kindleberger and R. Aliber, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 5th ed.
(Wiley, 2005).

Chapter 11—Email 217

Mail Clients
A mail client is a software program that allows you to send, receive, and manage electronic messages
(emails). Mail clients get messages from a mail server and display them to the user, allowing users
to read, compose, and send emails as well as move emails between folders on their mail server. All
operating systems now include an email client and help new users set up their email account during
initial setup.
Most modern mail clients are integrated with
personal productivity applications including
tools for calendaring, contact management,
and task management. For example, when you
use Outlook (a desktop mail client), it will have Figure 168 — Tabs for mail, calendar, contacts, and
a tab for managing mails, another for managing tasks in Outlook (a popular email client).
calendar events, and another for managing
contacts (Figure 168). Similarly, if you use Gmail (Google’s browser-based mail client), you will also
have access to Google Calendar and Google Contacts.
The mail client typically communicates with the mail server using a protocol called Internet
Message Access Protocol (IMAP). A protocol is a precise specification of the interactions between
communicators. Protocols govern every aspect of communication between computers. The IMAP
protocol is used by mail clients to synchronize messages between your local computer and the server.
When you delete an email on your email client, IMAP ensures that the email is also deleted from your
mailbox on the server, operated by your Internet service provider or mail service. If you have multiple
computers connected to the same email account on the server (for example, on your phone and
on your desktop), IMAP ensures that an email deleted on one device is also deleted from all other
devices. Similarly, an email read on one device is also marked as read on all devices connected to the
same email account because IMAP helps the server inform all connected devices about the state of
every message on the server.

Protocols Create Efficiency and Precision

In TV shows or movies, you may have heard cryptic conversations between
police officers over the radio, or between members of a medical team prior to a
procedure. These conversations are generally very different from typical social
conversations. Most of the time, you don’t understand the conversation. Yet
you may also have noticed that these cryptic conversations obey well-defined
rules, with well-defined meanings for every word used in the conversations and
are relatively quick and error-free. These cryptic conversations are an example
of protocols.147

When you compose an email and hit “Send,” your mail client sends the message to your mail server,
which then forwards it to the recipient’s mail server. When the recipient logs into their mail client,

147 This example to explain protocols is from L. Pouzin and H. Zimmermann, “A tutorial on protocols,”
Proceedings of the IEEE, 1978. 66(11): pp. 1346–1370

218 Chapter 11—Email

their mail client requests their mail server for all new messages and their mail server delivers your
message along with all other new emails to the recipient’s mail client for display (Figure 169).

Figure 169 — Email system architecture.

Desktop Mail Clients

Some of the most popular desktop mail clients are:
1. Microsoft Outlook—A widely used email client part of the Microsoft Office suite;
2. Mozilla Thunderbird—This open-source email client is from the Mozilla Foundation;
3. Apple Mail—The default email client for Apple’s macOS operating system;
4. Gmail—Google’s web-based email service can be used as a desktop client through the use of
a web browser.
These desktop mail clients work by connecting to the mail server using the appropriate protocol and
downloading the email messages to the desktop. The client provides a user-friendly interface for
managing email accounts and messages, as well as tools for composing and sending new messages.

Mobile Mail Clients

As smartphones are handy and easy to use, some people end up using mobile
mail clients as frequently, if not more frequently, than desktop mail clients.
1. Gmail—Google’s email service allows users to access Gmail accounts
and manage emails directly from mobile devices;
2. Apple Mail— The default email client for Apple’s iOS devices, it allows
users to manage email accounts from iPhones and iPads;

Chapter 11—Email 219

 3. Outlook—Microsoft’s email client is available on both iOS and Android
devices. It allows users to manage multiple email accounts, including
Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, and others;
4. Yahoo Mail— Yahoo’s email service is available as a mobile app for iOS
and Android devices. It allows you to access and manage your Yahoo
email account directly from mobile devices.

Receiving, Creating, and Forwarding Mails

Most popular email services—Gmail, Office 365, Yahoo Mail, Apple Mail—are all free and easy to
use. If a recruiter you met a few days ago told you to check your email for their response, you may
be inclined to check your email every few minutes, whether you are at the mall or a park and have
no access to computers. Isn’t it great that you can check your email using your smartphone? With
all these services, there are multiple ways to check and receive messages. Some email clients, like
Outlook, have both desktop and web versions. Once your desktop Outlook is set up, you just need
to open Outlook to receive all the latest messages. However, if the desktop Outlook application is
giving you trouble for some reason or you do not have your
own machine with you, you could go to outlook.com using any
computer and login with your user-id and password to receive
and send messages.
If you use Gmail, you probably already know that you can access
it from anywhere if you have a phone or a computer with an
Internet connection.148 To access your Gmail using a computer,
just type Gmail.com in the location bar of your browser and
enter your user-id and password as directed.
Once you log in to Gmail, all your received emails will be visible
In order to access or use Gmail
in the Inbox. The other important folders you may need to
you must first create an account
access frequently are Sent, Drafts, Trash, and Spam. All email or sign in.
clients have some version of these folders with the same or
similar names (Figure 170). As the names suggest, the Sent folder will have all your sent messages;
Drafts will have the messages you composed but did not send; Trash will have all the messages
you deleted; and Spam will have all the emails that the system has determined to be unwanted or
unsolicited. Whenever you want, you can go back to a draft message, reword it, and send it out. Emails
in the Trash folder will remain there for a period of time that depends on your email provider. If an
email was mistakenly moved to the Trash folder, you can easily restore the message to your Inbox.
It’s useful to regularly check your Spam folder, particularly if you’re expecting an important email,
to make sure that your legitimate emails have not ended up there by mistake. Email providers use
machine learning algorithms to determine which emails are unwanted and unsolicited—phishing
scams, messages from unknown senders, or messages containing malicious content. These algorithms
can mistakenly label useful emails as spam.

148 To hear about Gmail’s origin story, particularly how Gmail was released by its creator Paul Buchheit
in one day, visit Aarthi and Sriram’s podcast episode page, https://www.aarthiandsriram.com/p/
the-man-who-created-gmail (accessed June 2023).

220 Chapter 11—Email

 FIGURE 170 — Folders are used to help filter, archive, and delete email. Gmail folders (top) and Outlook folders
(bottom).

To send an email to friends or colleagues, you only need their email addresses. In Gmail, clicking
on the large “Compose” button in the top-left corner will open a new email window where you can
enter the email addresses of your friends/colleagues in the list of recipients, write a subject, which is
a summary of your email, and type your message in the body of the email. If you want to send a copy
of your email to others, enter their addresses in Cc (carbon copy) field. The Bcc (blind carbon copy)
field lets you send a copy of your email to people without other recipients being able to see the Bcc
recipients’ email addresses. This is a very useful feature if you want to send an email to a group of
people without revealing their email addresses to each other.

Chapter 11—Email 221

You can also attach files and photos to your
email by clicking on the “Attach File” icon (a
paperclip at the bottom) and then selecting
files and photos (Figure 171). Finally, you
just need to click the “Send” button to send
the email to your recipients. Outlook and
other email clients work similarly, clicking
on the “New Email” button (Figure 172) FIGURE 171 — After selecting to compose an email in Gmail
you can also attach files utilizing the built in functions.
opens a window where you can enter
the email addresses of recipients, add
attachments (Figure 173), type your message and subject, and send the email by clicking on the
“Send” button.

FIGURE 172 — Similar to other email clients, in Outlook you can create new emails by clicking on the new email
button.

FIGURE 173 — In Outlook like other email clients, after clicking on the new email button you can edit your message,
header, addresses, and attach files.

Reading an email is as easy as clicking on the email in your Inbox (Figure 174). If you have any
attachments in the email you have received, you can click on the attached file to view the attachment.
Keep in mind, clicking on attachments from unknown senders can be dangerous, as it may have
malicious content. Though modern mail clients perform various checks to identify malicious
attachments, ultimately you are the victim if your computer gets damaged or your information gets
stolen. We will discuss this further later in this chapter. Once you have an attachment open, you can
download and save it or print it (Figure 175).

222 Chapter 11—Email

 FIGURE 174 — Attachments sent or received via email in Outlook are highlighted.

FIGURE 175 — Once attachments are downloaded printing and editing can take place.

To make sure you don’t miss attachments sent with an email, both Outlook and Gmail prominently
highlight the name and the document type of the attachments (Figure 176).

FIGURE 176 — Attachments sent or received via email in Gmail are highlighted.

After you finish reading the email, you can reply to the sender of the email by clicking on the “Reply”
button. When you open any email, you have received in Gmail, you will see the option to “Reply,”
“Reply all,” and “Forward” at the bottom of your message (Figure 177). You can also click on the dots
in the top-right corner to open a context-sensitive window that will let you “Reply,” “Reply to all,” and
“Forward.” As the names suggest, clicking on “Reply” (this is also represented with an arrow pointing
to the left) will open a new email that has the email address of the sender in the “To” field and the
original message from the sender quoted in the body of the message. You can also add additional
recipients. Then type your reply and click the “Send” button. Clicking on “Reply” to all opens a new
email with the sender’s email address and the emails addresses of all other recipients of the original
email in the “To” field. You must use “Reply” to all only when your reply is relevant for everybody on
the email to avoid bombarding and annoying people with unnecessary emails.

Chapter 11—Email 223

 FIGURE 177 — Gmail and similar clients allow users to reply, replay to all, or forward emails received.

Sometimes you may need to print an email. Thankfully, printing any message in your Inbox is easily
achieved by clicking on the printer icon or using the print option in the context-sensitive window. In
Outlook, right-clicking on your mouse will open a context-sensitive window that has the print option
(Figure 178). You can also use the “File” tab at the top to print email messages.

FIGURE 178 — Outlook and similar clients allow users to quickly print emails by right clicking messages.

The option to “Forward” message lets you send an email message you have received in your Inbox to
others. Clicking on the “Forward” button (sometimes it is an arrow pointing to the right), will open a
new email with the original message quoted in the body of the mail. You just need to add the list of
recipients, type your message, and click the “Send” button to forward the email.

224 Chapter 11—Email

Organizing Email into Folders
We saw in the “File Management” chapter on operating
systems that folders are the essential mechanism
to organize information on computers. Email also
supports folders to organize email. By default, most
mail services include an Inbox folder for all received
mail; a Sent folder for all emails you send; and a Deleted
or Trash folder for emails we delete. In addition to these
folders provided by the email system, you can create
folders to meet your needs. To create a new folder, use
the standard procedure of right-clicking a folder to
bring up the context menu to create a new subfolder
within it (see Figure 179).
FIGURE 179 — Creating new folders
To move email between folders, click the email in and subfolders in Outlook can aid in file
management.
the inbox and drag and drop it into the folder of
your choice. With a judicious choice of email folders,
messages can be easily located within the appropriate folders.

Mail Labels
Motivated by its search heritage and leveraging its superior search abilities, Google adopted the
principle of “search over structure” to organize email. Google adopted the concept of using labels
to organize email.149 Labels are tags that can be added to any email message.150 In Gmail’s approach,
all messages remain in their default folders—inbox for incoming email, sent for outgoing messages,
spam for undesired mail, etc. Users can search messages by text, date, attachments, etc. To organize
email, users can attach labels to a message by right
clicking the email and selecting one or more labels to
attach to the message.
Though folders probably feel intuitive, arguments in
favor of labels include the ability to attach more than
one label to a message, and ease of locating messages
using search compared to navigating folders to locate
a message.
Gmail already gives you a few folders like Spam and
labels such as Promotions and Social where emails
are directed automatically. You can also easily create
new labels depending upon your needs, such as Sales,
Utilities, or Action Required. These can be added using FIGURE 180 —Within Gmail’s settings labels
the “create new label” menu item (Figure 180). The new can be created to support organization.

149 Google Workspace Learning Center’s page for “Organize and Find Emails,” https://support.
google.com/a/users/answer/9260550 (accessed June 2023).
150 A useful page about labels, “Gmail Labels; Everything You Need to Know,” https://hiverhq.com/
blog/gmail-labels (accessed June 2023).

Chapter 11—Email 225

labels will appear in the menu on the left. Once you create the label, you can right-click on any email
to bring up the context-sensitive menu and attach the label to the message. The message can now be
found in the inbox as well as by selecting the label in the menu on the left.
As always, creating too many labels can also make it difficult for you to remember and categorize
emails. A small set of well-selected labels is more than sufficient in most cases.

Mailing Lists
A mailing list is a feature used in email systems that allows messages sent to one email address to be
delivered to another email address or a group of addresses. For example, you can create a list called
“[email protected]” that forwards emails to all students in the school, without having to include
individual email addresses in the message. Your teacher may use a mailing list to inform all students
and parents in the class about an upcoming activity. Your school principal may use a mailing list to
inform all students in the entire school about an issue. Universities routinely use mailing lists for
announcements to students, faculty, and staff. Mailing lists make email an extremely powerful service.
However, the convenience of mailing lists also results in everyone receiving tens of emails—personal,
official, advertisements, and others—every day. This can make your inbox unmanageable and
important emails difficult to find amidst the clutter.

Mail Filters and Rules

Fortunately, email clients help you deal with email clutter by allowing you to create email filters to
automatically move emails matching specific criteria to a folder (e.g., Outlook) or apply a label (e.g.,
Gmail). This way, those emails don’t clutter your Inbox.
To create a filter in Gmail, go to “Settings” (the gear icon in the top-right corner) and select the “Filters
and Blocked Addresses” tab (Figure 181). Clicking on “Create a new filter” brings up a window where
you can enter the filtering criteria. Once you select your criteria, click on Search to see the emails that
will get filtered by the criteria. When you are happy with your filtering criteria, you can click “Create
Filter” and decide what you want to do with the filtered emails—for example, move them to the
“deleted items” or move them to a particular folder automatically.

226 Chapter 11—Email

 FIGURE 181 — Creating a new filter in Gmail (Step 1–top) and (Step2–bottom).

Outlook and other email providers also offer similar procedures to allow you to filter emails. In Outlook,
right click on any email to categorize it into any of the available categories.
Filters are called rules in mail clients such as Outlook. To create a rule in Outlook, just go to the “File”
tab and click on “Manage Rules and Alerts.” A popup window opens allowing you to create new rules
and modify existing ones (Figure 182).

Chapter 11—Email 227

 FIGURE 182 — In Outlook, email rules can be selected to help automate processes.

For example, you could automatically divert emails from mailing lists to a folder called “Lists” that you
open once a week to get updated on the information in the lists. This way, emails from your teachers
that require your immediate attention will not get buried under promotional or other emails.

Managing Signatures
An email signature is information that is automatically added at the end of an email. Signatures typically
include contact information or personal touches such as a favorite quote. Creating signatures for your
emails saves you the effort of typing basic details every time you send an email. This is particularly
useful if you send emails to customers and would like to have your name, address, phone number,
email, and company logo in the emails you send.
To create signatures in Outlook, go to the “File” menu and select options. In the Outlook “Options”
window, select “Mail” from the left-hand menu and scroll down to the “Signatures” section. In the
“Signatures” dialogue box, you can click on “New” to create a new signature (Figure 183).

228 Chapter 11—Email

 FIGURE 183 — The Outlook Signature and Stationary menu window allows the user to create and edit signatures.

You can have a different signature for new

messages compared to replies and forwards.
To add a signature or change the signature
of an email, go to the “Insert” tab at the
top and click on “Signature.” Choose the
signature you want to insert it in your email
(Figure 184).
To create signatures in Gmail, go to your
account and click on the gear icon in the
top-right corner of the page. Select “See
all settings.” This brings up the familiar FIGURE 184 — To insert a created signature in Outlook, go
settings menu which we saw in Figure 181 to the signature function under the Insert tab.
on creating email filters. In the “General” tab,
go down to “Signature” and create a signature by giving a name to your signature and adding the
signature text (Figure 185). As in Outlook, Gmail also allows you to create different signatures for new
emails compared to reply/forwards. You must save the signatures by clicking on “Save Changes” in the
bottom of the page to activate the signatures.

Chapter 11—Email 229

 FIGURE 185 — In Gmail, users can create email signatures under general settings.

Email Sensitivity, Security, and Delivery Options

At times, you may want to send an email that is
personal or confidential. Email clients can help
maintain some level of privacy by disabling the
common methods used to distribute messages,
such as forwarding and printing. Users can still take
screenshots of your messages and send those out if
they choose, but only with additional effort.151
In Gmail, you can use the confidential mode to
protect sensitive information, so the recipients
cannot forward, copy, print, or download messages.
You can also require your recipients to receive a
passcode from Google to see the message and set
an expiration date for the message. To invoke these
options, in the “Compose” email window, click on
the “lock” icon in the bottom (Figure 186) to open
the “Confidential mode” window (Figure 187).
FIGURE 186 — Clicking on the lock icon at the
bottom of the Compose email window in Gmail,
opens the email sensitivity option.

151 For more information about Gmail’s confidential mode, see “Protect Gmail Messages With
Confidential Mode,” https://support.google.com/a/answer/7684332?hl=en (accessed June
2023).

230 Chapter 11—Email

Similar options exist in Outlook. You can change
the importance and sensitivity of an email—mark it
“Personal,”“Private,” or “Confidential.”To access these
options, when you open a new email window, go
to the “Options” tab. Clicking on “More Options” will
open the “Properties” window that has a range of
security settings and delivery options (Figure 188).
You can also make sure the email is not delivered
before a certain date and set an expiration date for
the message.

FIGURE 187 — In Gmail users can send confidential

emails to protect information.

FIGURE 188 — Under the Options tab in Outlook, users can change the importance, sensitivity, and delivery options
of an email.

Chapter 11—Email 231

Email Contacts
Contacts are people you communicate with. They are usually
family, friends, and business associates. Contact management
features of productivity applications allow you to save phone
numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, and other relevant
information about your contacts for ready access. Most email
services and clients let you save contacts and create groups
of contacts to make it easy to send emails to your colleagues
or friends. In Gmail, you can access contacts by clicking on the
“Google Apps” icon in the top-right corner of the screen (it looks
like a square made of nine smaller squares152 see Figure 189). Click
on “Contacts” to open the contacts manager. You can add and
delete contacts. You can also group contacts by labeling them.
You can create a label called Friends and add all your friends to
it (Figure 190). When you want to send an email to your friends,
FIGURE 189 — The contacts
just type “Friends” in the To or Cc field to send an email to all your
feature in Gmail helps to increase
friends. This feature is tremendously useful when you send emails your efficiency when sending
to contact groups frequently. emails to colleagues.

FIGURE 190 — In Gmail, changing the label of your email contacts allows you to add them to groups.

Automated Messages
A frequent need in work environments is to know when a recipient is busy or out of the office and unable
to respond promptly to emails. This allows email senders to take alternate measures to complete their
tasks. Email services allow you to send automated replies in these situations. Automated messages
are preconfigured responses to all incoming messages. Automated messages tell folks emailing
you that you are unable to reply—for example when you are on vacation or outside of the reach
of the Internet. A best practice for automated messages is to share the contact information of your
colleagues who cover for you while you are unable to respond to messages. This allows senders to
reach out to your colleagues for any assistance to complete their tasks.
Since automated messages are commonly used when users are on vacation, they have come to be

152 This is called a waffle. For some context on the use of food icons on websites, see “How Did Food
Get In My Website and Digital App?” https://bluezoocreative.com/2013/10/navigation-trends-
hamburgers-waffles-and-breadcrumbs/ (accessed June 2023).

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known as vacation responders, vacation messages, or simply, out of office messages. To turn your
vacation responder on in Gmail, click on the “gear” icon in the top-right corner and access settings.
Under the “General” tab, scroll down to the “vacation responder” and turn it on. You can set the start
and the end dates of the vacation response and type your Subject and Message (Figure 191).

FIGURE 191 — Gmail allows users to set up vacation responders.

Outlook and other email clients

also have similar capabilities.
To set your vacation response
in Outlook, go to the “Files” tab
and then click on the “Automatic
Replies” tile to access the
window that allows you set
automatic replies (Figure 192).
This completes our discussion
of email. Email is one of the
core technologies enabling our
digital world, particularly at
work. Email’s convenience and
efficiency helps professionals
to exchange information and
speed up decision making.
Email’s archiving capabilities
make it a valuable record-
keeping tool in organizations. FIGURE 192 — Outlook allows users to set automatic replies.
Effective email use can greatly
improve your own productivity.

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Using Calendars to Schedule Meetings and Tasks
We now introduce calendars. Calendars are productivity
applications that help individuals and teams manage
their schedules, appointments, and tasks. Calendars
allow users to create and manage events; view schedules
in various formats such as daily, weekly, or monthly;
schedule meetings; and share their calendars with
colleagues or clients. Calendars are typically integrated
with email, so we will discuss calendars alongside email.
To access Gmail’s calendar, open your Gmail and click on
the “calendar” icon on the right pane (Figure 193). If the
calendar opens as a pane to the right of the Gmail Inbox,
you should click on the “Open in new” tab icon to make it
easier to see your entire weekly calendar.
FIGURE 193 — Gmail users can access a
If you want to schedule a meeting with others, click on built-in calendar.
the “Create” button and select “Event” (Figure 194). Since
the Covid pandemic, videoconferencing capabilities have become tightly integrated with calendars.
Goggle calendar allows you to add Google Meet video conferencing to any meeting with up to a
hundred attendees. You can click on “More options” to open a detailed window where you can enter
the message you want to send to your attendees, specify meeting and notification time, and add
location. When you click on “Save,” the meeting is added to your calendar and an email with the event
information is sent to all invitees. This email is called a meeting invite. The email has options for the
receiver to add the event to their own calendar. This is the basic operation of calendars.

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 FIGURE 194 — Creating an event in Google Calendar. Step 1(top)—create the event. Step 2 (bottom)—add details
about the event.

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As you see in Figure 194, you can make the meeting recurring (shown as repeat in the figure) if needed.
Setting up a recurring meeting is useful if you plan to meet the same group of people on a regular
basis. For example, if your student club meets at the same time and place each week, setting up the
club meetings as a recurring appointment can easily put all the club meetings for the year on every
club member’s calendar with just one click.
Microsoft’s Outlook software is also integrated with calendaring software that allows you to schedule
audio and video meetings and create appointments to remind yourself of specific tasks. Click on “New
Meeting” to open a window where you can specify all the details about the meeting, including the
date and time of the meeting, recurrence, required attendees, optional attendees, location, and the
message your attendees will receive (Figure 195). In businesses, Outlook is typically integrated with
Zoom or Teams to allow you to create video meetings with ease as part of the event creation.

FIGURE 195 — Creating a new meeting in the Outlook calendar. Step 1 (top)—create the New Meeting. Step 2
(bottom)—add details about the meeting.

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Clicking on the “Required” or “Optional” button of the meeting window opens another window—the
address book—where you can pick email addresses of your attendees and even book a location for
your meeting (Figure 196).

FIGURE 196 — Outlook users can utilize the address book to filter attendees.

If you are scheduling a meeting with your colleagues, you may have partial access to their calendars
to be able to see when they are free. This allows you to schedule a meeting at a time that works for
everyone. Click on the “Scheduling Assistant” tab to see when your attendees are free or busy in a
grid format (Figure 197). Bold colors indicate times when a person is busy and gridlines indicate times
when they may be free. You can change the time of your meeting or the day of your meeting to make
it easy for others to attend. In this example, both the required and optional attendees are free at
2:30 p.m. on Monday (January 30th). Once you pick a time that works for everyone, you can go to the
“Meeting” tab and send the invitation.

Chapter 11—Email 237

 FIGURE 197 — The Outlook Scheduling Assistant can help users avoid scheduling conflicts.

Email Security
Before we close the chapter, it is useful to draw your attention to a few security concerns related
to email. Most cybersecurity issues arise from individuals trying to reach your computer to steal
information. Since email is a mechanism for users (including malicious users) to reach you, email has
emerged as an important cybersecurity vulnerability. According to the data breach investigations
report published by Verizon, over 80% of all computer breaches involve the human element.153 We
highlight a few important cybersecurity considerations below.

153 The 2022 Verizon data breach investigations report can be accessed at https://www.verizon.
com/business/resources/reports/dbir/ (accessed June 2023).

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Phishing Attacks
Since we keep a lot of valuable personal information and company secrets digitally, cybercriminals
have much to gain by tricking you into allowing them to use your credentials to steal information
that you have access to. Perhaps the most common method to do so is phishing. Phishing is the use
of emails that appear to be from reputable companies, but are really designed to get users to reveal
personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers. A common method is to send
emails that appear to be from a bank or ecommerce site asking you to refresh your credentials. When
you click on the link and log into the site, the operators get your credentials, which they can use to
make purchases using your account.
Phishing attacks come in the form of deceptive emails or text messages that may ask you to install a
software or divulge personal information. The attacks are increasing in frequency and getting more
sophisticated and dangerous, so it is important to be watchful when you receive a suspicious email
or text from an unknown person. Don’t be fooled by shopping and tax deals or shipments you are
about to receive unless you are sure about the senders. Sometimes, you may also receive a phone
message that lends credibility to the email or text message, adding to the urgency of the request. To
get your personal information, criminals also create fake websites that look exactly like well-known
and reputable government or business websites. The result of a successful attack can be disastrous.
In a notable case, Facebook and Google lost over $100 million in a phishing scam where a person in
Lithuania tricked employees into wiring money to his bank account.154 This just goes to show that
nobody is above these scams, not even people working in tech companies themselves.

Spear Phishing
A spear phishing attack is more sinister and malicious because it is targeted at a particular individual.
The cybercriminals often do their homework on social media; they know who you are—may know
the names of your family members, managers, and friends. They may use your manager’s social media
posts to make the attack even more directed. Let’s say you work in the purchasing department of a
company and receive an email from your boss directing you to buy supplies in a hurry—to create a
temporary invoice, approve it, and send $1000 to an account. The attacker may even customize the
message and say, “I talked to our director, Jane, who is at her daughter’s wedding. She’s good with
it and will sign off when she comes back to work next week.” In this example, the hacker knows that
your manager is traveling, and his boss is at her daughter’s wedding and won’t be back at work for
some time. The criminals might even have hacked your boss’s email account and were just waiting for
the perfect moment (when he is traveling, and his boss is at an important event) to send the email
from his address.
Targeted attacks can be particularly difficult to detect, so it is important to spend some time and
pay attention to small details, like the tone of the request. Have you ever received a request like that

154 This is the case of Evaldas Rimasauskas, who was prosecuted in 2019. You can read about it
at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-fraud-tech/lithuanian-pleads-guilty-in-u-s-to-
massive-fraud-against-google-facebook-idUSKCN1R12FB (accessed June 2023).

Chapter 11—Email 239

from your manager/friend in the past? Run the request by your manager or someone similar. Just like
banks and other institutions that use multiple ways to authenticate users, even you should employ
relevant means to validate unusual requests by talking to others or running the request by specialists
who deal with cybercriminals regularly.155

Emails Don’t Go Away

Your email communication serves as a system of record from a legal perspective. When you send a
mail, a copy of it is retained on your provider’s email servers as well as at the receiving end. Even if
you delete sent emails, they remain on the servers and in the inboxes of your recipients. As only you
are expected to be able to send emails from your address, any message you send is a written record
of your intent and is admissible as digital evidence in most courts. Therefore, before you send out an
email, always remember the permanence and system of record aspect of emails. Also, it is important
to re-read important emails a few times for tone, intent, and accuracy. The written word generally
appears less polite than the spoken word. When in doubt, be extra-polite when writing emails.
Because of the ease with which we can send emails we sometimes end up writing things we may
regret later. Emails do not communicate your facial expressions. You may call your boss “a tough boss”
jokingly in his presence. However, writing the same thing in an email may take on a serious note and
may be construed as rude or even threatening. Many people make a rule of never sending an email in
anger. If you do type an angry email, let it sit there for a day or two before you hit the “Send” button.

155 A colleague of one of the authors of this book, a professor at a university, became a victim of
a phishing attack and lost $500. He was asked to buy iTunes in a hurry as a birthday gift. These
attacks are all around us.

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 Chapter Terms and Definitions

Attach File: A feature in the email client that Messages (Emails): Electronic forms
allows users to share files through email messages of correspondence that allows users to
communicate and share files through the Internet
Desktop Mail Client: Desktop mail clients
connects to mail servers, downloads email Mobile Mail Client: Mobile mail clients offer
messages, and displays them to the user on portable connection to mail servers and the
desktop computers ability to download and display email messages
by utilizing mobile computing devices
Draft (Email Folder): A folder within the email
client where messages that are created but not Phishing Attack: An attempt to steal information
sent are stored from victims through the use of social engineering
techniques and various communication channels
Email Address: Email addresses are uniquely
assigned or created by users, and are used to Reply: To answer; reply only sends the new
send emails to specific users or parties message to the original sender

Email Contact: Within the email client a list Reply All: To answer; reply all sends the new
of colleagues, friends, or other users that have message to the original sender and all other
previously interacted with your email address are recipients on the To and Cc lines
saved as email contacts
Scheduling Assistant: Email scheduling
Forward: To send an email to someone else or assistants help users identify availability for
to a different address after you have received it; meetings, this allows users to schedule in advance
forward allows you to type in a whole new set of while increasing attendance
recipients
Send: The action of an email client sending a
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP): message to the mail server, which then forwards
Provides an ease of access to emails from it to the recipient’s server
any location or device without the need of
downloading it to your hard drive Sent (Email Folder): After you send an email
message, you might want to find that email; your
Inbox: A repository for all received emails within email service stores those messages in the Sent
the email client Items folder

Mail Client: A software program that allows you Signature: Email signatures allow users to
to manage and send electronic messages (emails) customize personalized messages that are
appended to the end of emails, and typically
Mail Server: Servers tasked with handling the contain the users name and contact information
data and traffic of email client users; these servers
handle the backend operation of email clients

Chapter 11—Email 241

Spam (Email Folder): A folder within the Trash (Email Folder): Items that you delete are
email client where messages that are deemed moved to the Trash folders, but aren’t permanently
unwanted or unsolicited are sent deleted until those folders are emptied

Spear Phishing: An attack used to steal the

personal information of a specific target or person;
the defining characteristic of spear phishing is
that the attack is targeted for a specific purpose;
named after a phishing method

242 Chapter 11—Email

 Chapter Case

I’m Admitted to USF!

Carl is ready to graduate high school and has applied for admission to the University
of South Florida. He has waited weeks to hear from the admissions office and today
he finally received an email in the inbox of his high school account. Take a close
look at the following email:

Question 1: What information in this email is unusual and what kind of attack is
this? Why is the information unusual?
Question 2: Why do you think there is a link in the email asking Carl to fill out a
Federal Student Aid application?

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