Based on questions I get, it’s clear that the differences between email domains, accounts, and addresses is an area of common confusion.
It doesn’t help that the terms are used inconsistently across the industry.
Most folks understand domains, more or less, but the difference between an email address and an email account? That’s not always clear.
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Domains
As I said, you probably know what a domain is. “askleo.com” is a domain, as is “hotmail.com”, “microsoft.com”, and “mac.com”. Those represent business or organizations on the internet. In almost all cases, they happen to have a web site associated with them, though it’s not technically required. Similarly, they all probably process email, though again, that is not necessarily required.
By processing email, I mean that email directed at some address “@” (at) one of those domains is handled by a mail server or servers specifically for that domain. In fact, all the internet really knows is that “mail for this domain is is handled by that server”. Sometimes it’s the same server as the web site – for example, as I write this, mail for “askleo.com” is handled by “askleo.com”. But sometimes it’s not – mail for “hotmail.com” is actually handled by four different servers, “mx1.hotmail.com” through “mx4.hotmail.com”.
A key factoid is that any domain can have a virtually unlimited number of email addresses and accounts associated with it. Think of all the possible email names to put in front of the “@” in “@askleo.com”; as the owner of that domain, I could choose to define any of them.
Accounts
I’ll put it another way: an account is used to read a mailbox. In order to download or read email in a mailbox, you must supply your account name and password.
In many cases, the email address actually identifies the account. For example, a Gmail account is completely identified by the corresponding Gmail email address. The upshot is that if you want to change your Gmail email address, you can only do so by creating a new GMail account.
Not all accounts are identified by their email address. A good example is an old Verizon account I had years ago. The account was identified by a cryptic user name like “res1234”, which isn’t an email address at all. But the email address that corresponded to that account was more as expected: “something @verizon.net”.
In my email program’s account configuration, I had to specify that cryptic name as my “User Name” (with its password, of course), and then when it asked for my email address, I would put in my @verizon.net address.
It was still a one-to-one relationship, though. One user name, one mailbox, and one email address that landed in that mailbox.
Addresses
An email address is a name for a mailbox. It is not the mailbox – it’s simply one name for that mailbox. The address of a building is not that building. The distinction is subtle, but important.
To put it another way: an email address is simply a way to put email into a mailbox. An email address simply tells the mail system, right down to the mail server for the specific domain, the mailbox into which the mail should be delivered.
So why is the distinction so important?
Because a single mailbox (account) can have many, many names (addresses). As one example, email sent to leo<at>askleo.com2 and email sent to sales<at>askleo.com – two different email addresses – end up in the same mail box – a single email account.
Now, whether any specific email provider can actually do this varies. Some do, often calling them “aliases”; others do it via forwarding (as mine does). Others don’t support it at all: one email address, one account, no exceptions.
Accounts and Addresses
So we’ve seen that accounts and addresses are related, and that they meet at the mailbox. Addresses put things into the mail box, and accounts are how you take things out. How does that translate into actual usage?
Well, depending on your email provider, you can often define several different email addresses that are all delivered into the same mailbox. For example, it’s not at all uncommon for various standard email addresses like “abuse@”, “postmaster@”, “webmaster@” and so on, to all be delivered into the same mailbox – the mailbox of the administrator for that mail server. I actually go so far as to have many email addresses on my “askleo.com” domain, but only one account. All the email on that domain is delivered to that single account. (I then use rules and filters to sort the email, based on what address it was sent to.)
Mailboxes, identified by your account, are what you access or download. That means that, regardless of how the email got there, regardless of what address was used to get it to that mailbox, when you download email from that account, all the emails in that mailbox are part of the package.
That has interesting implications: it means you can control what email gets downloaded when by having more than one account. I could separate askleo.com into two accounts, for example: one for the email addresses I want to pay attention to quickly, and the other for things that aren’t as critical. You could also segregate email based on which address it was sent to, which is what I do with my askleo.com email.
In practice I have two primary accounts: business and personal. Each has several email addresses that are all delivered into the two mailboxes associated with those two accounts.
The Office Building
Domains, accounts, and addresses still a little unclear?
Time for a metaphor.
Imagine a large office building. This office building has hundreds of employees, and deep down in the basement is a mail room, which receives the tons of paper mail delivered by the postal service every day.
- The “domain” is the address of the building. The postal service simply delivers all mail for anyone in that building to the back door, where they drop it in big a lump. That’s the equivalent of the internet handing off all email addressed to that domain to the mail server for that domain.
- The “mail server” is the team of hard-working mail clerks who pick up the mail from the back door, carry it down to the basement, and start sorting it.
- Each employee has a physical mailbox – that’s their “account”, in which they receive their paper mail.
- Each mailbox is protected by a lock and key. That’s the equivalent to the employee’s email account username and password.
- Incoming email is delivered as the mail clerks examine each piece of mail and shove it into a corresponding mailbox.
- However, each employee might go by several names … each of those is an “address”. I might go by “Leo”, “Leonard”, or “Chief Technology Officer”, and the mail clerks know to deliver all the email addressed to any of those to my single mailbox.
- And finally, there’s the guy that takes the mail out of your box, and delivers it to your desk for you to read. He’s your “mail program”.
I could extend the metaphor a little further … perhaps the mail clerks recognize and automatically throw away junk mail – that would be your spam filter. Mail that the clerks don’t know how to handle? They mark it “unknown; return to sender” – that’s a “bounce”.
Email isn’t dead
Every so often you hear someone proclaim that “email is dead”. Far from it – email is alive and well and the backbone of digital commerce, information flow, and general person-to-person connections.
But it can be complex.
Hopefully, understanding how domains, accounts, and addresses all relate will help you better appreciate the digital magic that gets your message from point to point. It can also enable you to use some features, like multiple addresses and accounts, to manage your own digital information flow.
If nothing else, now you have an understanding of why, when configuring your email program, it asks for both email address and account.
They’re two different, yet related, things.
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What are your thoughts on having different addresses for each contact so that one may track who is passing along contact info to third parties?
You can certainly do that, but it’s often a lot of effort. Not sure it it’s worth it. Even when you narrow it down to one contact – it may not be that one contact at all, but something about his or her email provider, the path to that email provider or something else. It’s difficult (and inadvisable) to point fingers. On the other hand, it’s fairly common when signing up for mailing lists, or leaving comments on web sites that require an email address to use a specific email address to see if THEY end up spamming you. People use Ask Leo! – specific email addresses when leaving comments all the time. (And, no, I don’t spam ’em :-) ).
I am a fan of “one account, one email address”, on top of the obvious “one account, one password”. I do this through alias providers such as Spamex, 33 Mail or Anon Addy (all are good, for different reasons).
It can be slightly inconvenient when you need to reply anonymously to email received, or even initiate a conversation from one alias (different providers have different policies on that matter). But it’s invaluable to switch off an offending address, when some business won’t respond to unsubscribe requests. And of course, to fight downright spam.
I only use this when talking with machines, or anonymous businesses, though (think e-commerce). Obviously, when dealing with actual persons you know, or have a personal rapport with (business partners, friends…), you’d want to use an email address bearing your name.
Oh, and great tutorial, by the way. Splendid metaphor of an office building.
That would be an extra layer of security but with a few hundred accounts requiring passwords, you’d need hundreds of email accounts and you’d have to check your emails for those accounts at least once every 3 months or more often to keep those email accounts alive or you risk not having a recovery email address for those main accounts. Although, your idea might be useful for a few of your most important accounts like your bank, Facebook etc.
One thing I’ve wondered about is replacing @ with <at> to show an email address on a web site. Aren’t spammers aware of this to the point of converting that in their harvesting bots? I’ve usually avoided <at> and used <the at sign>
They get enough low hanging fruit that still has the @ that I doubt they bother. But yes, any technique used enough could get on their radar.
Why do some web sites such as Youtube prohibit users to write the @ sign? I usually see users write “at” in the comments.
It’s an invitation to spammers to include an email address in a public forum. Some forums may specifically disallow the @ sign for that reason.
Well, at least now I am confused at a higher level……..ain’t progress wonderful…..
Thank you for providing this information.
Regards Tom.
I find it really annoying that people who used to check their email regularly, now leave large intervals between accessing their messages. This seems to be a social media thing where they’re all busy putting up their lunch pictures etc. etc. up for ‘everyone’ to see. Unfortunately this behaviour seems to be spilling over to the less conscientious in their work activities and they seem to be treating digital mail with contempt in some cases. Guess it’s back to paper mail and ‘snail’ delivery – not that that always gets the attention it deserves.
I don’t know if you are referring to work emails or personal emails. If it’s work emails, then there’s no excuse for ignoring your work, but if it’s personal email, I’ve noticed a trend that many younger people prefer to use messaging programs like Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp or even SMS text messages. They see email more as a work tool.
I haven’t emailed my children in years. I communicate via Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger. From my experience, the result is similar, just new means of communication.
This is all still very confusing. I stumbled here searching for the answer to this question:
Can I have the same email address from a different provider? I own a domain, and have a website. I don’t like my email provider, I want to switch but I want all my employees to still have the same email address. Is that possible?
If you have your own email domain, then yes, you can move email for that domain to any provider.
What about emails that use a different suffix, like .com or .net? Are these interchangeable? My email address is .net from Earthlink.net. But I recently found that I could use the same address with Earthlink.com. Why is that?
.com and .net are not interchangeable in email addresses. If they are interchangeable on Earthlink, it is because Earthlink specifically registered both top level domains (.com and .net) with your email account. I have a {myname}.gmx.de email account which is also addressable as {myname}.gmx.net.
2 weeks ago, I made transactions to pay the bill to my supplier. The supplier sent me an invoice via email with a wrong name of my company and so, I told him to update the invoice again.
Within 24 hrs, the invoice was updated to me by email which I thought was sent by him because that email was sent in the same thread that we used to use with my supplier. The invoice looks exactly the same with the first except the bank account mentioned inside them are different. However, I didn’t notice that and transfered the money to the account of the fraudster.
Only when I checked with my supplier after a week of my transfer, I realized I was cheated by a fraudster. When I check the emails, I find out that the email used by the fraudster is a completely different email address than my supplier’s email address. It has never been involved in the whole thread until the fake invoice was sent. But my supplier said that that email address was very much similar to email address of his daughter except his daughter ‘s email contain an extra zero in it.
My question is that :
How the fraudster ‘s fake email appeared in the same thread where me & my supplier exchanged emails from the start. Is it even possible ?
Let’s say the fraudster hacked into our emails.
Where might be the attack possibly coming from ? Coming from my email or my supplier ‘s?
In other words, Who attracted him in the first place? Me or my supplier?
I hope you can share your idea regarding these.
Many thanks.
Unfortunately there’s no way to know where in the email path your emails might be getting spied upon, if indeed that happened. I would make sure every step of the process I had control over was secure. (Email account password & recovery information, the security of the PCs and network equipment over which the message travels, and so on.)
Hey Leo!
Few years ago i made instagram profile and i was almost certain i connected it to my facebook, unfortunately i have deleted my facebook so tought my Instagram will be deleted too. So yesterday i wanted to check if it really is deleted and since i dont remember password i went to forget my password. The mail that was listed below as my mail was very odd looking. I was sure i made my instagram profile on gmail.com but i got a msg my account was connected to e*****. com. What kind of domain is that and how is it possible? I am really confused.
The asterisks are just placeholders for the real characters which are not shown for security purposes. So the domain is simply one that starts with ‘e’ and ends in ‘.com’. If that’s not something you recognize then you likely will be unable to regain access to the Instagram account.
Hi Leo, thanks for the article. I found it really helpful especially the metaphor at the end. You referred to the mail server doing various jobs (like redirecting, filtering spam, putting Leo/Leonard/CTO in the same mail box). Does that mean each email provider has their own mail.server?
The reason I ask is due to Barbara’s question about changing email provider as she has her own business domain, a web site and emails ending (say @xxx.com). If she changed email provider then using your analogy, then the hard-working mail team might be a team of contractors handling all her mail and then if she changes to a different provider then that would be equivalent to the old team being fired and new team of contractors put in their place. So same address, same building, same mail boy delivering it to your desk but a new mail room team. Would that be correct?
Email providers typically do have their own email servers, yes. :-)
Hi,
My internet provider (which actually has not provided access to internet in the past couple of years- another story there) plans to end my relationship with them at the end of March 2023. They tell me they will delete all my mail. Currently, my email is with them and they use WebMail, who they have a contract with. I have another computer set up on Linux with Thunderbird on it. I can get my mail onto Thunderbird by clicking ‘get mail’ when on that computer. Will this email be able to show the content of the emails on Thunderbird once the company deletes my email from WebMail?
I also have a few domains. I will also have to get a new email address (after 20+ yrs), since the account with the ISP will be no more. How do I set up an email connected to my domain, and do I have to have these domains actively hosted somewhere, so that they are active on the web in order to get email from them? I think they are all hosted currently, but not active- when you click on one of them you get a page saying ‘future home of…’
I do not understand how to change this, other than I think I would be having a different server. (I am assuming this server is the company hosting my domains?) But how does the new server get all my stored emails that are in files so I do not lose the content of those emails?
Does Thunderbird already have all that content? Meaning, once the ISP deletes, will the content still be there on Thunderbird? Or will it be lost/inaccessible once the company I am currently with deletes everything?
Does Thunderbird have its own server, and these emails that are on Thunderbird still will have all the content on them and stay accessible after the current ISP deletes everything? Sorry- this is confusing to me, and my IT guy is not available for the next 3 months! I have to figure out how to preserve all my stored emails (many of which are in folders on the WebMail) and change my email address. I hear that having one attqached to my own domain prevents these issues should an ISP decide they are bailing on their customer. Is that true? I wish I knew something!
Thunderbird does not have its own server — all email is hosted EITHER on your computer, OR your email provider’s servers (or both). This depends on how you configure your account in thunderbird. For a move I recommend configuring with POP3 which will download everything to your PC.
I have an article that goes over the options when your ISP goes away. I’ll refer you there to start: How Do I Keep My Email Address When I Change My ISP?