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How does Email Work?

There is a lot of confusion about some basics of how email works - what is the difference between Incoming and Outgoing email, where email is stored, and why Highland provides certain services and not others.

Unlike the regular Post Office service, email is not (normally) a two way street. Although it appears in your Outlook, Entourage, or other email client that emails coming in and out are using the same system, often this is not the case.

Incoming mail

An email addressed to joe@domain.com is stored on a server somewhere until you come and download it to your local computer. You have to tell your email client (Outlook, Entourage, webmail, etc. ) which server your messages are stored on and how to log into that server - called setting up your POP server settings. POP stands for Post Office Protocol. You can set your email client to leave a copy of the email on the server or not after you download it. Warning - emails can rapidly build up and completely clog your inbox.

Incoming mail has now become a commodity item in the Internet world, with many companies providing email boxes for less that a dollar a month. Most incoming email systems offer spam filtering and antivirus filters that scan all incoming messages.

Outgoing mail

Outgoing emails use something called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This is where you compose an email on your email client and send it to someone else.

Normally, this service is provided by the company that provides you with your connection to the Internet - on the device that you are using. So, it is very possible to have a different SMTP setting for your home computer, your office computer and your smartphone.

Now, here comes the part where spammers come into play - and why Highland Software does not offer SMTP service.  Spammers (actually their automated robot programs) are constantly looking for "open SMTP" servers. If they can find one, they instantly start using it to spew out spam. Of course, they don't use their own servers - they would easily be shut down that way.

The big problem for a company like Highland is getting "blacklisted". If a spammer starts using a Highland server for spam, others will quickly find out and block ANY email coming from that server - even legitimate ones like order confirmation emails, notification emails, etc. We definitely don't want this to happen.

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