email-risks-3

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Information overload

A December 2007 New York Times blog post described E-mail as "a $650 Billion Drag on the Economy",
and the New York Times reported in April 2008 that "E-MAIL has become
the bane of some people’s professional lives" due to information
overload, yet "none of [the current wave of high-profile Internet
startups focused on email] really eliminates the problem of e-mail
overload because none helps us prepare replies".

Technology investors reflect similar concerns.

Spamming and computer viruses

The usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by four phenomena: e-mail bombardment, spamming, phishing, and e-mail worms.

Spamming is unsolicited commercial e-mail. Because of the very low
cost of sending e-mail, spammers can send hundreds of millions of
e-mail messages each day over an inexpensive Internet connection.
Hundreds of active spammers sending this volume of mail results in information overload for many computer users who receive voluminous unsolicited email each day.^[27][28]

E-mail worms use e-mail as a way of replicating themselves into vulnerable computers. Although the first e-mail worm affected UNIX computers, the problem is most common today on the more popular Microsoft Windows operating system.

The combination of spam and worm programs results in users receiving
a constant drizzle of junk e-mail, which reduces the usefulness of
e-mail as a practical tool.

A number of anti-spam techniques mitigate the impact of spam. In the United States, U.S. Congress has also passed a law, the Can Spam Act of 2003,
attempting to regulate such e-mail. Australia also has very strict spam
laws restricting the sending of spam from an Australian ISP, but its impact has been minimal since most spam comes from regimes that seem reluctant to regulate the sending of spam.
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email-how-it-works-2

When Anita composes a message, HAPPY NEW YEAR,

using her mail user agent (MUA), she types in, or selects from an address book, the e-mail address of her correspondent. She hits the "send" button.

1. Her MUA formats the message in Internet e-mail format and uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send the message to the local mail transfer agent (MTA), in this case smtp.a.org, run by Anita's Internet Service Provider (ISP).
2. The MTA looks at the destination address provided in the SMTP protocol (not from the message header), in this case adheesh@a.org. An Internet e-mail address is a string of the form localpart@exampledomain.com, which is known as a Fully Qualified Domain Address (FQDA). The part before the @ sign is the local part of the address, often the username of the recipient, and the part after the @ sign is a domain name. The MTA looks up this domain name in the Domain Name System to find the mail exchange servers accepting messages for that domain.
3. The DNS server for the b.org domain, ns.b.org, responds with an MX record listing the mail exchange servers for that domain, in this case mx.b.org, a server run by Adheesh's ISP.
4. smtp.a.org sends the message to mx.b.org using SMTP, which delivers it to the mailbox of the user Adheesh.
5. Adheesh presses the "get mail" button in his MUA, which picks up the message using the Post Office Protocol (POP3).

This sequence of events applies to the majority of e-mail users.
However, there are many alternative possibilities and complications to
the e-mail system:

• Anita or Adheesh may use a client connected to a corporate e-mail system, such as IBM Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange.
  These systems often have their own internal e-mail format and their
  clients typically communicate with the e-mail server using a
  vendor-specific, proprietary protocol. The server sends or receives
  e-mail via the Internet through the product's Internet mail gateway
  which also does any necessary reformatting. If Anita and Adheesh work for
  the same company, the entire transaction may happen completely within a
  single corporate e-mail system.
• Anita may not have a MUA on her computer but instead may connect to a webmail service.
• Anita's computer may run its own MTA, so avoiding the transfer at step 1.
• Adheesh may pick up his e-mail in many ways, for example using the Internet Message Access Protocol, by logging into mx.b.org and reading it directly, or by using a webmail service.
• Domains usually have several mail exchange servers so that they can
  continue to accept mail when the main mail exchange server is not
  available.
• E-mail messages are not secure if e-mail encryption is not used correctly.

It used to be the case that many MTAs would accept messages for any
recipient on the Internet and do their best to deliver them. Such MTAs
are called open mail relays.
This was important in the early days of the Internet when network
connections were unreliable. If an MTA couldn't reach the destination,
it could at least deliver it to a relay that was closer to the
destination. The relay would have a better chance of delivering the
message at a later time. However, this mechanism proved to be
exploitable by people sending unsolicited bulk e-mail
and as a consequence very few modern MTAs are open mail relays, and
many MTAs will not accept messages from open mail relays because such
messages are very likely to be spam.

Note that the people, e-mail addresses and domain names in this explanation are fictional: see Anita and Adheesh.
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email-origin-1

Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a store-and-forward method of writing, sending, receiving and saving messages over electronic communication systems.

My way of saying "WISH YOU ALL HAPPY 2009!"
What is email?

The term
"e-mail" (as a noun or verb) applies to the Internet e-mail system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, to network systems based on other protocols and to various mainframe, minicomputer, or internet by a particular systems vendor, or on the same protocols used on public networks. E-mail is often used to deliver bulk unsolicited messages, or "spam", but filter programs exist which can automatically block, quarantine or delete some or most of these, depending on the situation.

E-mail predates the inception of the Internet, and was in fact a crucial tool in creating the Internet. MIT first demonstrated the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) in 1961. It allowed multiple users to log into the IBM 7094^[16]
from remote dial-up terminals, and to store files online on disk. This
new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail
started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility were SDC's Q32 and MIT's CTSS.

E-mail was quickly extended to become network e-mail, allowing users to pass messages between different computers by at least 1966 (it is possible the SAGE system had something similar some time before).

The ARPANET computer network
made a large contribution to the development of e-mail. There is one
report that indicates experimental inter-system e-mail transfers began
shortly after its creation in 1969. Ray Tomlinson initiated the use of the @ sign to separate the names of the user and their machine in 1971. The ARPANET significantly increased the popularity of e-mail, and it became the killer app of the ARPANET.

         Source

E-mail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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high-security-browser-firefox

How to get protection from scammers, spammers and trigger-happy viruses; that too free? Incredible, but true, by using FIREFOX as your web browser instead of Internet Explorer. So, Internet lovers and Security conscious netizens use Firefox to stay away from the bad guys.
My way of saying WISH YOU HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Firefox is the safest browser.

I am sure it will continue to be so.
There's a Method to the Madness

Reasons:

• Anyone around the world (and Firefox has thousands of experts watching it) is able to look into the source code of Firefox and find any potential weak spots
  in its armor. This is possible because Firefox is open and accessible, unlike its competitor giant Microsoft ©.
  
• When experts get to know about a problem, they (Firefox belongs to everyone) roll up their
  sleeves and get to work fixing it right away. It’s in for everyone's best
  interest to take care of risk issue, even if it means
  admitting, "Hey! We’re a little less than perfect".
• Simply put, Firefox gives security top priority.

Firefox keeps your personal info personal and your online interests safe from threats.


There is more to tell about Firefox. Why don't you yourself check it?

Firefox, love it or leave it. Be strong or stay soft.

Firefox Features
* Security
* Customization
* 100% Organic Software
* Tips & Tricks
* Release Notes
* Other Systems and Languages

This article is not publicity stunt. It is not to earn, but to share what I learn.

Why be safe?
It is useful for people like me, who are beginners, stepping into this
awesome wild world of internet that has entered the mobile phone. World Wild Web is now spilling into our pockets, purse, pants or close to our heart.
(I mean that is where we carry our mobile phones.)

Internet has immense capacity to be abused or misused.
Kids will be using the internet or mobile.

Like it or not, internet is here to
stay, to link us.
Do not let it steal. Be sharp. Be safe.

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Dr. Ashok Koparday



Source
Mozilla Products | Security

For more details on how Firefox keeps you safe online, visit our security blog.
http://blog.mozilla.com/security

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