Mailbox provider

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. 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

Main article: Internet service provider

Many mailbox providers are also access providers. 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

Launched in the 1990s, AOL Mail, Hotmail, Lycos, Mail.com and Yahoo! Mail were 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 American entrepreneur Steve Jurvetson, Hotmail grew from zero to 12 million users in 18 months. In 1997, Microsoft purchased Hotmail for $400 million and relaunched it as MSN Hotmail the same year. This was relaunched as Outlook.com in 2012.

Premium email services

Main article: Premium email, Email hosting service

Paid equivalent of free mail providers. 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. 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. However, local authorities concerned with Internet privacy issues may add rules and requisites on top of the original Internet email design.

References

References

1. . (March 17, 2015). ["M³AAWG Anti-Abuse Best Common Practices for Hosting and Cloud Service Providers"](https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/document/M3AAWG_Hosting_Abuse_BCPs-2015-03.pdf). *M³AAWG*.
2. Dave Crocker. (July 2009). "Internet Mail Architecture". [[Internet Engineering Task Force.
3. (June 2012). "Creation and Use of Email Feedback Reports: An Applicability Statement for the Abuse Reporting Format (ARF)". [[Internet Engineering Task Force.
4. (November 2011). "Complaint Feedback Loop Operational Recommendations". [[Internet Engineering Task Force.
5. Jurij Leskovec. (2008). "Dynamics of Large Networks". ProQuest.
6. Law, David. (July 18, 2016). "Outlook.com leaves preview as the world's fastest growing email service going from 0 to 60 million in just 6 months". [[Microsoft]].
7. Thurrott, Paul. (July 31, 2012). "Outlook.com Mail: Microsoft Reimagines Webmail". [[Penton Media]].
8. (May 7, 2007). "Windows Live Hotmail Launches Worldwide in 36 Languages". IT News Online.
9. Wilhelm, Alex. (October 3, 2011). "Microsoft announces massive Hotmail update to better combat Gmail". The Next Web.
10. John Klensin. (October 2008). "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol". [[Internet Engineering Task Force.