HostArmada Web Hosting Knowledge Base

Knowledge is power! Use that power and achieve total and unconditional control over the Web Hosting Services!

What are the components of an email?

Since the invention of electronic mails (emails), back in the 1960s, they are have been utilized for business, military, and personal means. The necessity for sending messages using the Internet has grown, ever more so because the world is getting more and more mobile. Most people have mobile devices wired to the web, and they are composing and receiving emails on an hourly, even minutely basis. 

Sending emails and delivering them without any issues has become an enormous necessity and requirement for business owners. Scripts or applications that use PHP mail() to send messages are especially susceptible to unsuccessful deliveries. WordPress is the most prominent CMS on the market, and unsuccessful deliveries could be detrimental to your brand. We recommend using YaySMTP to add SMTP authentification to your mail send-outs, ultimately increasing the chances of WordPress emails reaching recipients.

When it comes to customizing WooCommerce email templates, make sure to check out YayMail - a drag and drop email builder for WooCommerce.

In this article, we are going to acquaint you with the three main components of an email in the hopes of familiarizing you with the way emails are structured. Knowing these parts of the email can help you create powerful spam-preventing filters using the filters in the cPanel. It should also tremendously reduce the chance of you falling victim to a spoofing attack.

The Email Envelope

To more efficiently manage delivery to different receivers, the software sending the message applies the idea of an envelope. This envelope is similar to the physical containers that are utilized for post office mail. It contains the sender and the recipient(s), which the sending server needs to deliver the message. If you have multiple "TO:" addresses, each server will receive his respective envelope containing ONLY the address that resides on that specific server. For instance, if you send an email to [email protected] and [email protected], the outgoing server will see the two addresses to which to deliver the emails. When the message is sent to [email protected], the respective server is NOT going to see the [email protected] and vice versa.

Usually, the information provided in the envelope is contained within the email header as well. Sometimes, there is a mismatch caused by the fact that a malicious entity has forged the header in an attempt to steal sensitive information. 

The Email Header

The header is the part of the email that always comes before the body and includes specific routing information of the message. It consists of the sender, the recipient, the date sent, and the subject of the message. Other optional data could be included, such as the receiving and sending time stamps of all the servers that were involved in the mail transfer. In addition to that, you can display the script which sent the email and the spam score if you are using spam-preventing software. 

Note that this component of the email is a regular subject for exploitation by hackers. By falsifying the information in the header, they aim to steal your delicate information, such as credit card details. 

The Email Body

The body is the part of the email that comes directly after the header. It contains the subject of the message, along with everything else the sender wrote inside the text field and any files they attached.

Final Words

Hopefully, the information inside this article was helpful, and you were able to understand the components of an email address. Emails are quite a fascinating subject and if you would like to know more about them, be sure to check the rest of our email articles here.

Was this article useful and on point?

Find out more about HostArmada entire range of optimized Web Hosting Services and take action today on improving your website Loading Speed, Security, and overall Stability!