What is Electronic Mail (E-mail)?

This is merely .a way of sending messages from one person to another via the Internet and a telephone line. Each Internet user has a unique e-mail address (such as anybody@msn.com) and by sending a message to this address, the recipient can read the message the next time he or she connects to the Internet. Internet e-mail addresses are usually provided along with a schools’ connection to the Internet and can offer individual e-mail addresses to pupils.

These are mainly groups of people who exchange e-mail about a subject that is of interest to everyone in the group. The information is automatically send to everyone in the group.

These are collections of messages written for public readership rather than addressed to an individual. Each collection, or group, of messages is about a particular subject or theme. Individuals can reply to these messages, and these replies are also public. In this way it is possible to track a multi-way conversation about an important issue of the day. At present there are thousands of Newsgroups on many different topics. Newsgroups range from specialist science research to support groups for asthma to fans of James Bond movies. Most of the press concern for pornography on the Internet refers to newsgroups but they are the easiest for school Internet providers to block or police.