Once you start looking you will discover that most individuals and businesses have an electronic address together with the more 'old-fashioned' telephone and fax numbers. An electronic mail message might be just a few line of text asking a friend a favour or it can be a large business proposal. E-mail is also delivered much faster than the conventional mail. There are e-mail programs, which can manage all your electronic messages for you. With an Internet account, you can send e-mail from within many applications such as word processing programs and web browsers.
Many browsers have the e-mail feature integrated into it.
E-mail is less private than the conventional mail since its contents could be read by anyone who has access to the recipient's computer. It is also possible to interrupt the e-mail on its way, read them and then send it as if it is untouched. Therefore it is wise to be cautious about sending sensitive material via e-mail unless you have some way of protecting the contents like encryption. The working of the electronic mail is quite simple and we will explain it with the help of the following figure. The e-mail message arrives at your service provider's server.