Introduction

E-mail or electronic mail has become a mainstay in today s society. According to the PEW Internet and American Life Project in a February-March 2007 survey, 71% of American adults use the Internet. In addition, they found 91% send or read e-mail. However, just because people use it does not mean they know how it works. Many individuals have no idea how the e-mail system works. In asking random people of varying degrees of geekdom how e-mail worked, I was shocked by some of the answers:

I know there must be the e-postal service out there that sorts through the mail and makes sure it gets to the right places.

E-mail is just one more way we get tracked by our bosses and forced into longer work times. (Said while typing on his BlackBerry, a common handheld email device)

I do get joke emails and then I print them and mail (snail mail) them to my family. Some of those jokes are very funny.

There was a small percentage that did know how e-mail worked, which gave me some hope I was not alone in the universe when it came to being a geek. However, this also brought some interesting thoughts to mind. Because people are generally poorly informed on how it works, they don t know how it stores data and thus what is there. Eureka we have evidence.

Where to Start?

Before you can start examining e-mail archives, you have to first understand the special language...