Email Email, short for “electronic mail,” is one of the most widely used features of the Internet, along with the web. It allows you to send and receive messages to and from anyone with an email address, anywhere in the world. Email uses multiple protocols within the TCP/IP suite. For example, SMTP is used to …
Archives: Glossary
Email Address
Email Address An email address is a unique identifier for an email account. It is used to both send and receive email messages over the Internet. Similar to physical mail, an email message requires an address for both the sender and recipient in order to be sent successfully. Every email address has two main parts: …
Email Bomb
Email Bomb An email bomb or “mail bomb” is a malicious act in which a large number of email messages are sent to a single email address in a short period of time. The purpose of an email bomb is typically to overflow a user’s inbox. In some cases, it will also make the mail …
Emoticon
Emoticon The term emoticon comes from “emotion and icon” and refers to facial expressions represented by keyboard characters. For example, the emoticon 🙂 represents a happy face and 🙁 represents a sad face. By inserting an emoticon into a message, you can help the recipient better understand the feeling you want to get across. While …
Extranet
Extranet An extranet is a private intranet (or internal network) that is partially accessible over the Internet. It allows for limited and controlled access to resources on an intranet to users outside of a business or organization. Access to an extranet typically happens by visiting a web portal in a browser, and provides secure remote …
Facebook Facebook is a social networking website that was originally designed for college students, but is now open to anyone 13 years of age or older. Facebook users can create and customize their own profiles with photos, videos, and information about themselves. Friends can browse the profiles of other friends and write messages on their …
Favicon
Favicon A favicon is a small icon that identifies a website in a web browser. Most browsers display a website’s favicon in the left side of the address bar, next to the URL. Some browsers may also display the favicon in the browser tab, next to the page title. Favicons are automatically saved along with …
Firewall
Firewall A physical firewall is a wall made of brick, steel, or other inflammable material that prevents the spread of a fire in a building. In computing, a firewall serves a similar purpose. It acts as a barrier between a trusted system or network and outside connections, such as the Internet. However, a computer firewall …
Flaming
Flaming Flaming is the act of posting or sending offensive messages over the Internet. These messages, called “flames,” may be posted within online discussion forums or newsgroups, or sent via e-mail or instant messaging programs. The most common area where flaming takes place is online discussion forums, which are also called bulletin boards. Flaming often …
Flash
Flash Macromedia Flash (later Adobe Flash) was a multimedia web browser plug-in that enabled animations, video, and interactive content on websites. Flash was an extremely popular plug-in for more than a decade, but it eventually fell out of favor due to a combination of performance and security problems and the introduction of HTML5 and its …