Internet Service Provider (ISP). A company that provides access to the Internet. Most also offer consulting in setting up internal networks and other aspects of internet and Web technology.

Attachment. An attachment is a file which is sent along with an e-mail message. The attached file can be from any application - word processing, accounting, graphics etc. Attachments cannot be read as ordinary text within e-mail messages. When activated they call up the appropriate application and open the file. (Only, of course, if you have that application installed on your computer.)

Client. Software that runs on any computer trying to check mail. It connects to the server, which holds all the mail. Eudora is an example of a client.

Server. The server is software that runs on a computer which receives incoming mail. The server then distributes the mail to individual clients. Microsoft Exchange Server and Post.Office are examples of servers.

The best sources for technical consulting will probably be your Internet Service Provider (ISP), or a large telecommunications company. The ISP will probably offer one or two standard solutions for Internet connectivity, while a larger telecommunications company might be more flexible. Other good sources include your contacts in other companies; your industry association; local NIST/MEP manufacturing extension centers; and Electronic Commerce Resource Centers.

Besides technical consulting, you should consider obtaining assistance on the critical question of how best to use e-mail for internal and external communication and information sharing. E-mail is more than a convenience. Because it is a powerful medium for information exchange, it can provide considerable benefits for its users. It is worth carefully investigating how e-mail can improve work-related information exchange between people and departments within your company, and between your company and your customers and suppliers. Many of the consultants able to help with issues of technical implementation can also be of assistance here.

Cost. Most ISPs charge a fixed rate per month, with dial-in charges priced as local calls. For that monthly fee users can send mail as many times as they wish, to wherever they wish, and containing as much information as they wish. (To get a sense of the possible savings, compare the cost of faxing versus e-mailing 10 CAD drawings across the country.)

Timing. E-mail combines the immediacy of a telephone (messages are delivered almost immediately) with the freedom of fax (participants do not have to be at a set place at a fixed time). This potent combination of attributes makes for richer communication, better problem solving, and efficient operations.

Document production and management. By making more information available in digital form, e-mail makes it easy to incorporate other people’s material into documents. Once produced, those documents can be stored in digital form, thus adding the power of electronic search and retrieval to filing systems.

Collaboration. The "mailing list" and "cc" features of e-mail make it easy to bring more people into projects and problem solving efforts. While too many of the wrong people can obstruct progress, appropriate choices of collaborators can generate great improvements in creativity and efficiency.

Disclaimer: Please note that ITI is not in a position to give legal advice, and your individual situation may vary in any case. Please consider the following a description of issues you may want to consider, but also please consult competent legal counsel in your state about these issues.

This is the common question, but it is not the right question. An e-mail message that you wrote yourself is a work of authorship, and thus the rules of copyright apply. In general, if you wrote it as part of your duties for your employer, (i.e. "in the scope of your employment") your employer owns the copyright. If it was not part of your duties (something personal or related to another activity, whether permitted by your employer or not), then you as author have some copyrights, but your employer, as owner of the system on which it was created or passed through, may have some rights to the copy on the system, such as the right to check for appropriateness, to check for employee performance, etc. If you are forwarding a message written by someone else, the issue gets even more complicated. For instance, whether the original author had the right and the intention to authorize any forwarding, your particular forwarding, etc.

If your employer is in the business of offering e-mail services to outsiders, your employer may be covered by the federal rules governing e-mail privacy, but if it does not make its system generally available, you may have no general right of privacy. You could still have a specific right if the employer promised it to you, but as always, the specific situation is critical to determining who has what rights to a particular message.

This is yet another area of law with many, many uncertainties and some significant variation from state to state.

As with any new communications media, legal issues of the Internet are emerging at a rapid rate, with a whole lot of discussion, but limited consensus so far. From what we make of the legal discussions about e-mail, employers do have some liability for how employees use a company’s e-mail system. The issues are similar to an employee's use of the company telephone, the company postage meter, the company vehicle, etc.

Without getting into the specifics of what is legal, illegal, or actionable, the best general advice is to exercise some caution. Within the company, e-mail can become a vehicle for sexual harassment, for creating a hostile work environment, or to set up gambling pools. Outside the company, employees can use e-mail to operate their own businesses or to send out fabricated messages in the name of other employees or their employer. Some employers monitor their e-mail systems, which presents legal issues, such as invasion of privacy. E-mail has also been be used to gather evidence against employers or employees. Of course, there are no more dangers and pitfalls of e-mail than there are of any form of communications, whether inside the office or outside. The telephone and postal systems are just as capable of such evils.

As with any potential liability issue, employers must set guidelines for the proper internal and external use of e-mail, just as you would for the proper use of the company telephone, stationery and postage, vehicles, etc.

For instance, you might have a policy along the following lines. (As always, check with competent legal and other counsel in your state for the specifics of your situation.) Remind your employees in writing that e-mail must not be used to send inappropriate and unprofessional messages, including:

A number of prominent liability law firms recommend some monitoring of e-mail, but this decision should not be taken lightly and not just because of employees’ privacy concerns. For instance, the fact that the company does try to monitor e-mail may be factor against the company when something slips through that monitoring.

With the newness and rapid growth of the Internet and e-mail, there is a great deal of uncertainty in the law. Companies may want to seek legal counsel in establishing proper use guidelines and before taking disciplinary action against employees because of alleged abuses.

Before thinking about which specific individuals should have access to electronic mail (or the Web for that matter), think about the overall impact of the technology in your company. This is a technology which minimizes the need for face-to-face contact, and which eliminates barriers to communication among your employees and between your employees and people all over the world. One possible consequence is a tremendous gain in efficiency and creativity. A countervailing outcome may be wasted time due to frivolous use. In our experience the benefits will far outweigh the disadvantages, but this is an issue that company owners must consider. Once planning gets down to specific individuals (or departments) the choice comes down to the cost of providing e-mail and the need for access.

Some e-mail packages have an option to inform the sender whether a message was received and whether it was read. One example is Microsoft Outlook, which has an option box that says "Tell me when this message has been delivered." Another example is Eudora which has a return receipt button labeled "RR."

Yes there are some risks, but simple and prudent tactics will keep you out of trouble. As a start, realize that there is no risk from plain text in e-mail. Text is passive and it isn’t going to suddenly "become active" and infect your system with a destructive virus.

There is risk when attachments, one of the most useful parts of e-mail, are sent. These attachment are usually files created by other applications (e.g. MS Word or AutoCAD). When you encounter one in an e-mail message, you can double click on it and Windows will launch the appropriate application. Again, when these files are simply documents they are usually harmless. (Although an MS Word document could have a destructive macro, or a Visual/Word Basic routine that could potentially do harm). If an attachment is an executable program however, then "opening" it means that you are in fact running it. That program could potentially do a lot of harm.

It is unlikely that someone you know will send you a virus. Although it is possible it is very unlikely that a malevolent third party would send you a message under the name of someone you know. If you do suspect a message (perhaps because it comes from an anonymous source, or a source you do not know) take the precaution of sending it back to the apparent sender, and ask for an explanation. Certainly, beware of opening attachments from strangers, especially executable attachments.

Start by asking: Is the information useful enough to other parties that they would go to the trouble of stealing it? In many cases the answer is "no." In how many situations, for instance, could someone hurt your business by knowing how many electric motors your customer wants to buy from you? A realistic answer to this question would be "those situations are really quite rare."

Sometimes of course, assurance of privacy is important. The most common example is when sensitive financial information is being transmitted. Less likely, but also possible are cases where new product descriptions (e.g. CAD drawings) are being transmitted. In these cases the first question must be whether the security threat with e-mail is any greater than with traditional forms of communication such as fax or regular mail. Addressing this question will often lead to the conclusion that no special precautions are necessary.

Sometimes, but not as often as one might think, there is a need for especially high levels of secure transmission. In these cases encryption systems exist which can raise the level of protection to very high levels. (The most popular one is PGP - [Pretty Good Privacy]. Many new e-mail packages have PGP integrated into their program. But always ask: Do I want to pay (in money, time, and trouble) for more insurance than I really need?

Finally, be aware that messages can fall into unintended hands even when no malice is involved. One likely scenario is a wrong address. Its easy to read half way through an e-mail message before realizing that you received it because of a typographical error in the address. The second scenario is that a message is undeliverable for some reason, and is routed to a systems administrator. Neither of these scenarios are common, but their possibility cannot be discounted.

If you can find a reliable supplier you have a choice of two solutions. You can outsource the work (e.g. to an ISP), or you can do it yourself. The choice depends on how you set the ratio of costs and benefits with regard to four issues.

	Preferred Alternative When Consequence is Highly Valued
Consequence for Company	Outsource	In-house
Focus on core business, minimize use of personnel for other reasons.
Available expertise which can be deployed to a variety of IS projects.
Ownership of a technological infrastructure, complete with control over what technology is acquired, how it is deployed, and how it is maintained.
Full control over e-mail. (Ex: reading or tracking employee’s use is limited by ISP’s ability to deliver service at a reasonable cost.)

There are three basic ways to connect to the Internet. Below is a description of each, followed by a decision tree to help choose among the alternatives.

Internet connection Method 1
One computer dials into the Internet, receives and distributes all of the e-mail for the company.

Favorable conditions for Method 1: A company already has an internal network and an internal e-mail system.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Easily builds on existing infrastructure. Only one account needed with an ISP allows multiple accounts for individual users.	Requires some systems administration burden.

Internet connection Method 2
Each computer that needs e-mail has a modem and uses it to directly dial an ISP.

Favorable conditions for Method 2: Few users, no existing internal network and no major need to have one.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Easy setup. No network to maintain. Only one account needed with an ISP allows multiple accounts for individual users.	Incoming e-mail cannot be shared with others. Can get expensive as number of users grow because each user must have his or her own account with an ISP. Use of e-mail cannot be supervised easily.

Internet connection Method 3
Company network has a permanent connection to the Internet via a high speed line (ISDN speed at least).

Favorable conditions for method 3: This is the best method when a company plans to make heavy use of the Internet.

Advantages	Disadvantages
High speed data transfer. (Especially useful for graphics.) Continual access, no need to make a telephone call. Stable and reliable connections. Access to all Internet functions, (e.g. WWW, file transfer protocol). Oversight of e-mail use.	High systems administration burden, � to � full time equivalent. Highest cost of all options.

There are two dimensions to this problem. First, it is necessary to make sure the software you choose is compatible with your hardware (Question 11). Second, make sure the e-mail package you choose provides the functionality you will need to help run your business.

The first hardware solution assumes an existing network and e-mail system. In this case the existing e-mail software can be used. E-mail from the Internet will be delivered in the same way as internal e-mail. If you do not have an internal e-mail system, a few major ones on the market are Microsoft Exchange and Post Office. Also required if there is not a system in place is the e-mail client, such as Eudora.

The second hardware solution requires that each computer providing e-mail have a copy of some e-mail program. Eudora or Microsoft Internet Mail are the most used e-mail packages on the market at the moment, but most of them have similar features.

E-mail packages span from basic programs that just give you the ability to send mail, to much more complex packages that can seamlessly integrate your word processing, spreadsheets and web content into e-mail. Its up to you to decide which functions you need, and how much you are willing to spend to get them. Recommended features are file attachments, return receipts (checking if your message was delivered), functions to work offline (compose and read e-mail without being on the Internet) and mail-check queues (automatic notification when e-mail is received). In reality, most modern packages will have most of the features you will need. Still, it is worthwhile to make sure before you buy. Finally, some e-mail systems include the ability to encrypt messages. If you are really worried that you e-mail may fall into the wrong hands, it may be worthwhile to look for this feature.

Because products and prices change so quickly it is difficult to provide precise figures. The numbers cited below are accurate as of the time of this writing (September 1997), and provide a reasonable order of magnitude that will probably remain correct for some time into the future.

Costs will depend on which of the three basic hardware architectures you choose for your e-mail system. (See question number 11). They will also depend on the state of your computers that are currently in place. If you have older systems running DOS you will need to upgrade to Windows^tm. If those computers won’t run Windows^tm well, you will also need to upgrade that hardware.

Over and above the specific hardware costs described in the chart below, you also need to get estimates for any implementation consulting, and training that you may require.

Two of the most promising search tactics are to see if training can be obtained from any of your technology vendors, and to ask acquaintances for recommendations. If these methods fail, check the Yellow Pages, your newspaper and computer magazines. Also, community colleges and Electronic Commerce Resource Centers are likely to have what you need. Finally, Web sites such as Yahoo may be able to provide good leads.

When assessing training providers, make sure they offer hands-on training on the e-mail package you will be using. Important topics that should be included are:

Minimal expertise is needed to maintain e-mail systems. (Be advised, however, that companies with e-mail are likely to have networks and other applications that will need expertise to maintain.)

Attachments should work between different e-mail systems. The trick is to figure out how the attachments are being sent. Most newer clients (Eudora, MS Internet Mail, Outlook) use MIME attachments, while older Unix systems use UUencoding. Since most newer systems can handle either format (as well as BinHex for the Mac), encoding format should pose no problem. Unfortunately, even when the format is the same, older clients may not be able to read newer versions of the same encoding scheme. If you run across this problem, there are a few things you can do. One is to have the sender re-send the data in a different format. Second, you can upgrade your e-mail system, since the newer systems can handle most, if not all, attachment formats. Last, you can find a utility that can convert between different formats, or decode them into readable data. Also, be aware that on-line services sometimes garble attachments.