Mailbox provider

"mail service provider" redirects here. For the marketing term, see email service provider (marketing).

A mailbox provider, mail service provider or email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behalf.

The term "mail service provider" was coined in the Internet Mail Architecture document RFC 5598.[1]

Types

There are various kinds of email providers. There are paid and free ones, possibly sustained by advertising. Some allow anonymous users, whereby a single user can get multiple, apparently unrelated accounts. Some require full identification credentials; for example, a company may provide email accounts to full-time staff only. Often, companies, universities, organizations, groups, and individuals that manage their mail servers themselves adopt naming conventions that make it straightforward to identify who is the owner of a given email address. Besides control of the local names, insourcing may provide for data confidentiality, network traffic optimization, and fun.

Mailbox providers typically accomplish their task by implementing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and possibly providing access to messages through Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), the Post Office Protocol, Webmail, or a proprietary protocol.[2] Parts of the task can still be outsourced, for example virus and spam filtering of incoming mail, or authentication of outgoing mail.

ISP-based email

Many mailbox providers are also access providers.[3] Not the core product, their email services could lack some interesting features, such as IMAP, Transport Layer Security, or SMTP Authentication —in fact, an ISP can do without the latter, as it can recognize its clients by the IP addresses it assigns them.

Free mail providers

Main article: Web mail server

AOL Mail, Hotmail, Lycos, Mail.com, Yahoo! Mail, launched in the 1990s, are among the early providers of free email accounts, joined by GMail in 2004. They attract users because they are free and can advertise their service on every message. According to Jurvetson, Hotmail grew from zero to 12 million users in 18 months.[4] That was before it was bought by Microsoft. Tutanota[5] and ProtonMail[6] started offering free email accounts in 2014, these two are the first in many email services promising free email accounts without having to compromise on your privacy (no advertising - data collection).

Premium email services

These are the paid equivalent of free mail providers. That is, a better alternative to ISP-based email. Much less popular than free mail, they target a niche of users.

Vanity email

Main article: Vanity domain

It is also possible to run a shim service, providing no access but just forwarding all messages to another account, which does not lend itself to direct use, for example because it is temporary or just less appealing.

Role as identifier

A mailbox provider is the administrator of the registered domain name that forms the domain-part of its email addresses. As such, it controls the MX records that specify which hosts will receive email destined to those addresses. The operators of those hosts define the meaning of the local-part of an address by associating it to a mailbox, which in turn can be associated to a user.[7] The mailbox provider also specifies how users can read their mail, possibly creating SRV records to ease email client configuration, or giving detailed instructions.

Email addresses are convenient tokens for identifying people, even at web sites unrelated to email. In fact, they are unique, and allow password reminders to be sent at will.

From a bureaucracy-oriented point of view, there is no formal undertaking beyond domain name registration. This role is based on IETF standards, and, unlike X.400 and other ITU-T works, in and of itself requires no arrangements with local authorities. The notion of Administration Management Domain (ADMD) is derived afterwards, from empirical evidence.[1] However, local authorities concerned with Internet privacy issues may add rules and requisites on top of the original Internet email design.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Dave Crocker (July 2009). "Administrative Actors". Internet Mail Architecture. IETF. sec. 2.3. RFC 5598. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5598#section-2.3. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  2. ↑ Murray Kucherawy, ed. (June 2012). Creation and Use of Email Feedback Reports: An Applicability Statement for the Abuse Reporting Format (ARF). IETF. RFC 6650. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6650. Retrieved 28 June 2012. ""Mailbox Provider" refers to an organization that accepts, stores, and offers access to [RFC5322] messages ("email messages") for end users. Such an organization has typically implemented SMTP [RFC5321] and might provide access to messages through IMAP [RFC3501], the Post Office Protocol (POP) [RFC1939], a proprietary interface designed for HTTP [RFC2616], or a proprietary protocol."
  3. ↑ J.D. Falk, ed. (November 2011). Complaint Feedback Loop Operational Recommendations. IETF. RFC 6449. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6449. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  4. ↑ Jurij Leskovec (2008), Dynamics of Large Networks, ProQuest, ISBN 9780549957959
  5. ↑ Panagiotis, Kolokythas (24 March 2014). "Tutanota Free - neuer Mail-Dienst macht Verschlüsselung einfach". pcwelt.de. PC Welt. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
  6. ↑ Nermin, Hajdarbegovic (20 May 2014). "CERN Scientists Launch Encrypted Email Service With a Difference". coindesk.com. CoinDesk. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
  7. ↑ John Klensin (October 2008). Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. IETF. RFC 5321. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
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