Email turned 35 this month. Email had its origin somewhere near 1965 in MIT. It was in 1971 that the first email in today’s form (user@machine) was sent by programmer Ray Tomlinson. From there it had grown to an unimaginable level. Recently other forms such as instant messaging and orkutting is becoming popular, but as an official communication mechanism email is still on top.

Even after getting into middle age, nothing much has changed for email. It still uses old protocols which are unencrypted (means no privacy at all, unless you use PGP keys for encryption). Also many people are not aware that it is easy to spoof email. Anyone with an SMTP server can spoof any address and can send message on somebody else’s behalf. Recently some attempts were made to combat this using domain keys by various email providers such as Yahoo and Google.

Domain key verifies that the sender’s domain name is same as what is specified in email. Hence if you get a mail from Yahoo  account to your Yahoo account (or any Domain keys enabled account), it will display that domain keys verify this to be sent from Yahoo. Check out the screenshot of Yahoo mail header on the left.

As email became popular, frauds involving email is also on the rise. Email spam has reached gigantic proportions and laws are passed to fight spam! Email spam is used to market various products (Viagra drugs being the favorite!), manipulate stock market by increasing interest in penny stocks and other scams such as the Nigerian scam (also known as 419 scam or advance fee scam).

Still, Happy birthday Email !

Further Reading
History of email
Wikipedia on email
All about domain keys
E-Mail Etiquette
Advance fee fraud on email
Worst emails - article by The Sun