Understanding E-Mail Addresses

UNDERSTANDING E-MAIL ADDRESSES Here's a question for you: how do you go about finding someone's e-mail address? Unfortunately, there is no reliable directory assistance, nor any central directory for Internet e-mail addresses--at least not yet. But by understanding e-mail addresses, there are ways to figure it out. Believe-it-or-not, guessing is frequently used, and it works sometimes. But before you try this on your own, let's take a quick look at the anatomy of an e-mail address. Internet e-mail addresses typically have two main parts: sophist@bigfoot.com First there is the user name (professor) which refers to the recipient's mailbox. Then there's an axon sign (@). Next comes the host name (bigfoot), also called the domain name. This refers to the mail server, the computer where the recipient has an electronic mailbox. It's usually the name of a company or organization. Finally, there's a dot (.) followed by three letters (com) that indicate the type of domain. An address ending with .com typically means that the host is a business, commercial enterprise, or an online service like America Online. Most companies use this extension. A host name ending with .edu usually means that the host is a university or educational facility. .org indicates the host is a non-commercial organization. Let's say you want to e-mail the President of the United States. You would send mail to president@whitehouse.gov. .gov is used by government agencies and officials. Other extensions you might encounter are .mil for military and .net for network. The latter tends to be reserved for organizations such as Internet service providers. By the way, there are plans to add seven additional top-level domains, such as .web and .nom, but when this will happen is anyone's guess. For e-mail addresses outside of the United States, there is often a [DOT] followed by two letters representing the country. For instance, .ca indicates Canada, .de indicates Germany and .nz indicates New Zealand. So how do you find someone's e-mail address? If you know where they work, you can guess the domain name. But what about the recipient's mailbox? At most organizations, people have their own e-mail box. The recipient's name may be just their last name (prater@mail.fvsu.edu), their first initial and last name (pratero@mail.fvsu.edu), or their first and last name separated by a dot or an underscore (oscar_prater@mail.fvsu.edu). Take a guess. The worst that can happen is that the message will come back to you. Although there is no comprehensive directory of Internet e-mail addresses, you can consult Yahoo! People Search or Bigfoot or Who?Where.. Finally, the chart below shows the difference between an e-mail address and the address of a website, also known as a URL. And whatever you do, don't go to www.whitehouse.com, Bre'r Bear.  Because, remember, just because it looks like company A owns it -- that doesn't necessarily make it so.  **Should Big Brother choose to look over my shoulder at this page, please note that I did not create a hyperlink to whitehouse DOT com.**