QUIZ – Email Basics

All are correct and can be used interchangeably. Email is a short form of electronic mail and should be spelt with a dash, as e-mail. Having said that, “email” is now an accepted form. Even the inventor of email prefers to use this spelling.

The modern form of email was invented by Ray Tomlinson and implemented on the ARPANET in 1971.

Tomlinson was the first to send an email from one computer to another. By the way, a messaging system by which one could leave a message for another user of the same computer had existed before Tomlinson’s contribution. And Tomlinson did not invent the @ symbol. That had existed for centuries. He just used it to separate the username from the computer name which resulted in the email address format we still use today.

Yes! Absolutely! Email has little to do with the World Wide Web. It, however, cannot exist without the Internet.

Your email account “exists” only on the server (computer) of the service provider. You can download messages and use the account from your computer or an internet enabled device such as a tablet or a mobile phone. But the account still exists on the remote computer!

Chrome is a web browser and NOT an email program. You can use it to open an email account via webmail. And that does not make it an email program. Outlook Express and Outlook are Microsoft’s email programs. The former is a free and stripped-down version of the latter. Thunderbird is the email program from Mozilla, the makers of the Firefox web browser.

All of the above.
You can use email to send any sort of digital file. There are a few restrictions, however. The file size of the attachment is always a concern; which means, email service providers place a limit on the email attachment file size. Also, Gmail and other services do not let you send executable files or viruses over email.

No two people can have the same email address (unless of course they share the same email account).

Once an email has left your inbox, there is no way of stopping it from reaching the recipient unless it is still lying in the “Outbox”, which means it hasn’t been sent as yet and you can delete it. However, if the message is in “Sent mail” (or equivalent) folder, it has already been sent or on it’s way to the recipient.

All the three popular services mentioned above offer free email accounts. You can, however, upgrade to a paid account that gives you added features, customer support and additional storage space.