Cabrillo College Library

  

Email (electronic mail) 

With a Web-based email account, you can go to any computer that has access to the Web to do your email (read, write, and send messages).  Hundreds of free Web-based email services are available. The ones listed below are fairly well-established and stable. When you sign up for an email account: 

1. You will be asked for some basic information about yourself, which the email providers use to better understand their user populations; 
2. You will be asked to read and accept a statement about your responsible usage of the service, and about the provider's liabilities; and 
3. You may be asked if you want to be on advertisers' email lists; for all the email service providers I know about, you can say no. 

It is important that you select a user name and password that you can easily remember. Note both down accurately somewhere safe. Both your user name and password are case sensitive (meaning: whether your letters are capitals or lower case matters). Some of these email services have millions (literally!) of users. If you choose a fairly common user name, you may find that someone else has taken it. Try adding a numeral to the name, e.g., jparker22 may not yet be taken, wheras some other user may have already registered as jparker. 

Your email address will consist of your user name @ the name of the service (with no spaces anywhere in the address). For example, if your user name on HotMail is jramos22, your email address on HotMail would be jramos22@hotmail.com. This is the address you give others who want to send you messages. 

To read your email, you go to the Internet Address for your service. For example, if you have HotMail, you go to http://www.hotmail.com/  Once you are at your email provider's Web site, you'll be asked for your user name (sometimes called a login) and password…..and you're off and away! 
 
tns 6/99; rev. gr 5/08