 I'm Tammany Auguston, better known to most of you as Sam, and today I'd like to welcome you to Sam's Tech Talk. In this episode, we're going to talk about email and the different email providers that you have. I'm going to give you a little bit of a history about email. I'm going to tell you what the most popular free email providers are, give you a refresher on what some of the common terms are. I'm going to show you how to create an email and how to add an attachment to an email, and then give you a little bit more info about the best ways to protect your privacy and to protect your computer from being infected with viruses, malware, Trojan horses, and other kinds of malicious software that can wreak havoc on your device through your email. When it comes to the history of email, electronic messaging is what email is, and it first entered into existence in the 1960s, and what it resembled then was what we call now text messaging. So now about the 70s, it evolved into something that's taken the form of what we recognize now as email, and it operates across computer networks like in businesses, but primarily it's used via the internet. Some of the early email systems required that the author and the recipient were both on their computers at online at the same time to be able to get the messages, kind of like to the instant messaging works today. Today's email systems, they're kind of based on a store and forward system, which means you use your provider to have them store your email, and then when the other person comes online from there, that grabs that email and sends it to them at that point in time. Your email servers, they accept emails, they forward them and they deliver them, and they will store the message for you. Neither the author of the email, which would be you if you're creating it, or the recipient of the email has to be online at the same time, so that's the great thing about email today. Now, the first commercial email internet provider was in the early 1990s, and in 1995, AOL, Prodigy and CopyServe were the main email providers, and of those, I think AOL is the only one that's still around. They give you a free email address, and that's just an automatic feature. Popular webmail services today, like Hotmail, those started popping up around 1996 and 97. The most popular email service today of the free email providers is Gmail. It's considered to be the best and the most secure service in the world, and it's used by more than, I think, 800 million people worldwide. It offers search capability for your email messages, so if you can't find one in there, you can just type it in a search box at the top and find it. The number two right now is Outlook.com. That is Microsoft's internet, I mean email service provider, and the third most popular one is Yahoo Mail, and they have recently set themselves up with AT&T with being theirs. Number four is one called GMX.com. It's not as well known as the other big names, but it does do a really good job. And the number five email provider right now is one called Zoho. That's spelled Z-O-H-O.com, and they're an independent one, and they do a really good and make a really easy email service for you. And those are the free ones that just remember that. Those are the ones you get for free, and there's never any reason to pay for an email address. Now, I want to remind you of the common terms that we talk about with email, and just what an email is. And an email is any message that is distributed by electronic means from one computer user to one or more recipients. So if you're doing a single email or a grouping message, it's an email there. And an email service provider or an ESP, and that's the company that actually provides you with your email service. And an email address, that is your actual name that identifies in your email. It is whatever you put out there with the at symbol and then the email provider's name. Like, if you have one and you use mine like I used to have one that was, I love Isabella at gmail.com. That was my pug's name. I just used something there, and I did that. So, you know, you choose what it is, and as long as no one else is currently using that one, you can use it. No two people can have the same email address unless you're sharing an email address. You just always remember that you have to use the at and your provider's name in it when you're doing the whole email. Another thing is junk mail and spam mail. And those are the emails that you get that you don't necessarily request, you know, anything from like a company that you bought something from where they just start sending you all kinds of emails and those kinds of things. Typically, a junk email is any email that is not something you requested or not something that is from someone who is in your address book. Okay, and what it means to block someone. This is what it's an action that your internet provider takes to prevent email messages from being forwarded to the end recipient. So, like, a lot of them now, if you don't put something in the subject line of an email, they block those emails from going through. That's because a lot of emails that have viruses come from email addresses that email messages that don't have anything in the subject field. So always remember to put something in your subject field. And an email header, that's the section of the email at the top that contains your information, the recipient's information, and it also provides some routing information even though you don't see that. Your subject line, that's the line that I was just talking about, that you always need to put something in there. Say something about what you're going to say in the email in that line. And an attachment, that is anything that you choose to attach to that email, it's a file, whether it's a picture file, a document file, anything of that nature. What your inbox is, that's where all of your incoming messages go. The messages that you receive from other people. And what it means to compose. Compose means to actually type your message. When everybody sees that dreaded folder on the side and it says drafts, and you see suddenly that you've got numbers in there, drafts is an incomplete email message that has been saved. Like say you got distracted and you walked away from your computer in the midst of an email and you come back and you don't see the email anymore, check your draft folder. Chances are it ended up there. Sent items, that's the folder where you see every single message that you sent there. Your address book or your contacts, that's where you store all of your email addresses for that. What it means to reply, that's just what it says. You get a message from someone, you touch the reply button, and you can send them a message back regarding that. Reply to all. This is one that you usually want to avoid, 99% of the time. Reply to all is when you get a big group message and instead of telling the recipient and there's received sending something back to just the person that you sent it to, you say reply all and then the person who sent it to you and every other person who got that message gets a little bit about that. And forward. That means to send an email that you got onto another person in an additional email message. Now, when you want to compose an email, that means just write an email. In most of the programs, it's as simple as hitting a button that says compose. And that'll open up a box that looks like, I'll show you that really quickly, it looks like, just like this box here where it says new message. And that's where you type in an email address there. And if they're in your address book, you will see it and you can just touch the person's name and then subject. That's that box where you always want to say hello and I'm just going to put test in there. Then you go beyond that and you start typing the body of your message. And that's what it is. So that's the neat thing about that. It's a simple thing. Once it's done, you just touch the send box and it goes from there. Now, a lot of people wonder how am I supposed to attach something to my message? Now, an easy way to think about that is, is I'm looking at this message that I started and 90% of the time you'll see a little thing that looks like a paper clip on there. And if you hover over it, it says attach file. You'll click on that and it will open up all of the documents that are on your computer. I'm going to go to one of these and I'm just going to randomly pick something here. I'm just going to attach a picture of a flower that I took here. You highlight what you want to do, click open. And then if you'll notice on your email, you start seeing a box where it says that it attached it to it. It's as simple as that. Then if you have another one to attach, you just hit the paper clip again and keep doing that until you add as many as you want. Just remember though that some people have a size limit on how big of a file they can receive from their email provider. So check with them on that so that they'll know that for sure. Or make multiple emails to send it in. Just do it that way. Then the next thing we want to talk about is when you want to send your message. Just like I said before, anytime you do that, you always look for that send box and that's where you do it. That's simple. Then if you want to start another one, you hit compose again. Now I want to talk about the best way of being safe when you get an email to avoid viruses and all that sort of thing. If you receive an email that looks suspicious, like you're not expecting it, the subject line just doesn't look right, or it's from somebody you don't know. If you don't feel good about it, just don't open it. Delete it right away without opening it. And never open attachments that you don't recognize. Lots of computer viruses are sent through attachments. That's how they get those there. And don't say anything in email that might ever embarrass you if it was seen by somebody other than the recipient of the email. One thing to remember. Once you send an email, once you hit that send button, it is out into the computer world, out onto the internet, and there is no way to completely get it back. Once it exists, it exists, and it's not ever going to go away. So just remember that. Be smart. Don't ever say anything that's going to embarrass you or your family or anybody else you know 50 years from now. And be sure that you try to keep your device as free of any problems by keeping your virus protection up to date. Those are the simplest ways to keep yourself safe. And another thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong email provider. It's all personal choice. Those are the things you want to think about there. Now, another thing that I want to share with you with this is I want to touch on one of my most common problems that people seem to have when we're doing the tutoring sessions that we do. People start going, well, how do I add my friends to something here? You know, how do I add a contact? And the first one I'm going to talk about with that is in Gmail. So if you're in Gmail with this and if you see where it says Gmail at the side, it has a little arrow that points down. When you click on that, it'll say Gmail, Contacts and Task. If you click on Contacts, it opens up all of your current contacts that you have. And for me, if we go down to my list, say I have somebody I want to get rid of or I need to edit. If you'll notice beside the names, you'll see a pencil. That's where you click on it to edit it. Or if you need to do other things, you can do that. Like you want to say you want to delete one. You would click Delete right there and it would be gone. That's the way you do that. Simple as that. Or if you want to add a new contact from this screen in the bottom right-hand corner, you'll see a profile with a plus sign. You just click on that and it is simple as say Create. And you just start filling in the relative fields. You don't have to fill in every one. Just fill in the ones that are important. Simple as that. Then to get back to your email, you click up where it says Contacts or actually you don't do that. You just close that tab at the top and it will take you right back to your email. Do you want to check email? Oh, and one thing I can show you here. I mentioned that draft folder earlier. When I clicked that sample message to show you guys and I went away from it, it saved it in the draft file. So if I go to there, I can click on that and there it is. I can start typing it again or I can delete it to get rid of it. It's as simple as that. Most people use Google or Gmail. So that's the easiest way to do there. So that's a good one there. Now a lot of you also to use Yahoo Mail. A lot of people that I tutor with. With Yahoo, they use a compose button to open up a new email for you and you just start typing. Now when you put in a person's name on theirs, a lot of times it opens up your list like that for you to start. You can pick people from a drop down menu. So I'm just going to pick one there. Then I put something in my subject mile. It's lying. If I don't know of anything, I'll just say hi or whatever there. Then when you're in this one, where you go to get to your attachments is at the bottom. If you want to attach a file, you click on the paper clip and do it just like you do in Gmail. And then the send button sends it to your person. Then like I've said before on these, if you want to look in your sent file to make sure that a message was sent. Right now mine says mine is empty. My message did not go through yet. But there it is. That's the message I just sent. It shows there. So if you need to check, that's how you do that. Now another one I'm just going to show it to you is Outlook.com. And the reason I'm showing you this one is is that some of the people that I've tutored with this one had a hard time finding where their contacts were. So when you look at Outlook.com for hotmail and for Outlook.com, you'll see beside that words Outlook.com some boxes. If you click on that, you'll see another little group of things. Your contacts is under the people tab. That's where you go to find your contacts. So, and then it's just as simple as you can add people by clicking on the new button or if you need to manage somebody there, say you go in there and you just need to look at that, you can make changes with them there. So that's as simple as that. Now the biggest thing to remember with all of these is that you have to be on the internet to send an email. An email will not send unless you are connected to the internet. Now, the most popular ones are Google. I mean Gmail which is through Google. Then you've got Yahoo and you've got Outlook. Those are your three ones. Now one thing I would caution people about is when your internet provider offers that, say you've got your internet with Charter and then suddenly your contract was up and you can get a better price with AT&T so you decide to go with them. So then you think, oh no, now I've got to change my email address. Now it's well and fine to do that but I would never use to take advantage of the email addresses they provide. Say you've got it with Charter, it would be whatever your first part is at Charter.net. But one thing that happens with that is that a lot of times after you delete your service with them, after a certain period of time, they deactivate those accounts. So you're usually better off to get your email through one of the independent free services and go from there. Now, the thing that I want to remind everybody is with this is that there is no right or wrong provider. Just because all your friends are using one, if you don't like it, don't use it. Check out the other ones, see if they can provide something that's easier for you to use. And remember, there is no magic place to go and look up email addresses. You have to get it from the person who owns the email address. It's not like the days of our telephone books where we could get, you know, telephone numbers. We have to know the email address of someone there. So, now, if anybody has any questions about email or any further problems with email, send me an email through the station and find out from me there. You know, just ask a question. I'll be happy to reply and help you with that. And that's pretty much what I wanted to talk about with emails. But now there are a few things I want to remind everybody of. The internet, computers, all these devices, they are tons and tons of fun. It's just a matter of taking the time to learn them and have fun with them. And there are tons of places to go for help. And, Shvoi again, if you are having problems with your email as in learning it or anything else with computers, you can go to the Meade Public Library. They provide tutoring sessions, an open session during the fall and winter and spring months. They happen on Tuesdays twice a month. Or if you need private tutoring, you can contact the librarian there, Kelly Rodey. She takes care of setting up computer tutoring for people. So if you've got email problems, you need to get somebody to just help you learn how to use it and you want a private session, contact her and she'll get one of her volunteers to come in and help you. And if you're over 50 or if you're 55 and older, you can go to the Senior Activity Center. Just contact them there and they can help you with getting tutoring help. There are tons and tons of us out there that will help you with anything from your email to learning anything about just how to use the devices that you have. So, you know, get out there, have fun, don't be afraid of it. All of us are in this electronic age and it's never going to go away. So hopefully I'll just hope that everybody will embrace what we've got out there and we'll continue to do that. Now, I'm going to close out for today and I want to thank everybody for watching. And just remember if you've got any kind of subject that you want to see me cover in the future, just send us an email. Let us know. I'll be happy to take care of it for you if I can. Or if I can't cover a whole show, maybe I'll respond in an email to you to see if I can help you out with that. So, for right now with Sam's Tech Talk, I'm Tammany Augusta, better known to most of you as Sam, and I will see you next time.