E-post

the true name for "e-mail"

If there's one term which has crept into the lexicon which grates my nerves to no end, it's "e-mail".

Words have power. The marketing whizzes constantly scam us with this inherent effect. Notice how "used" cars are no longer on the market. Now they're "preowned". (Oh really? Does that mean when the previous owner was driving the car, then he was preowning it?) Cars are given cool animal names--Mustang, Cougar, Viper. And I don't think we'll have any fear of seeing an Aardvark, Puffin, or Sloth prowling the streets.

So it gets back to the "mail" connotation. People think they are sending off a message as secure and law-protected as a snail-mail letter.

Sorry folks. It doesn't work that way. Your text and attached files are open to anyone along the way to its destination. The Internet uses TCP/IP protocol to communicate. That means a few, easy to grasp details:

  • your file is chopped into chunks called packets
  • the packets wend their way by being passed (and copied) from one server to another
  • the packets don't all necessarily go the same route--that's the robustness of TCP/IP
  • the packets are reassembled into the file(s) at the other end

    The killer is the second one. If any schmuk, snoop, evidence gatherer wanted to keep a record of your files being sent to or from you, it would be incredibly easy. And if you think that by pressing the "Delete" key that all traces of a file disappear, then you have as much to learn about computer systems as Oliver North.

    If you've done it, have you written a letter versus writing someone a postcard. If you have not, then go with the thought experiment.

    Ask yourself this: were you as free and open with your thoughts and feelings on the back of a postcard as you were with them sealed in an envelope?

    Of course not. Yet people use e-mail everyday thinking it's completely analogous to snail mail--court orders to intercept, the whole nine yards.

    Nope. It's bare-assed naked to the world. It's an "e-postcard". What I call an "e-post".

    Unless of course you use encryption so only the recipient sees the contents.

    Which is exactly analogous to a real letter. So do yourself a favor, if it's communication that you care about, make it so only a the receiver can rightfully read it. Exercise your right to be a good netizen.

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