Email provider

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An e-mail provider (also e-mail provider or e-mail service provider ) is an Internet company that has a mail server and offers its customers e-mail accounts and e-mail inboxes on this mail server. The customers can be other companies or private individuals.

variants

Email providers can be divided according to the type of provider:

  • General organizations whose members or employees participate primarily for a reason other than the use of e-mail or the Internet, e.g. B. Schools, universities, (city) administrations, associations, clubs or companies. In these cases the service is i. d. Usually not associated with costs for the participants, the use is often mandatory and not available to persons outside these organizations. The choice of the email address is usually the responsibility of the IT department and not the participant. At universities in particular, it is common to be able to continue using the address after you have finished your studies.
  • Internet access providers and web hosts usually also offer customers e-mail accounts in addition to their core services. d. Usually included in the price. The customer is free to choose his email address, provided that it is not already used by someone. If the customer changes provider, he usually loses access to such accounts. Mail forwarding can rarely be set up, i. H. the user loses these addresses.
  • Freemail providers are Internet service providers who offer free e-mail accounts for everyone, e.g. B. as an entry-level tariff in addition to their paid tariffs with a larger scope of services. The free accounts are often ad-supported. With freemail providers, there is no entitlement to use the e-mail address set up. A freemail provider can discontinue its service, as the development at epost.de and lycos.de showed: these services were discontinued in 2005 and 2009 respectively.
  • So-called premium e-mail services are characterized by the ad-free use of the e-mail address. Most freemail providers also offer this in the form of fee-based tariffs. B. distinguished by more storage space, extended functionality, free telephone support and higher reliability.

Webmail portals

Some e-mail providers display advertisements and tabloid messages on their Internet portals in addition to e-mail administration in order to retain their customers . Sometimes the email content is used for targeted online marketing .

Permanent availability

A user can secure a permanent e-mail address by setting up his own domain . Such a domain can be registered through any web hosting provider. The provider forms the interface to the responsible Internet registry for domains ( NIC ). You can change the provider if necessary without losing the domain. Another advantage from the user's point of view would be the use of a personal name in the email address, e.g. B. first name@familienname.de or surname@companyname.org.

Tasks and offer

In addition to e-mail inboxes, e-mail providers usually also offer their customers protection against spam and computer viruses. As a result, affected e-mails do not get into the user's e-mail inbox. Usually, for the same reason, email providers do not allow mass emails to be sent via their servers.

Legal obligations

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

privacy

According to Section 88 of the Telecommunications Act (TKG), everyone in Germany (whether a company or private person) who offers long-term telecommunications services for third parties with or without the intention of making a profit is obliged to maintain telecommunications secrecy . A company that provides its employees with an email account and tolerates the private use of this email account is therefore not allowed to monitor the employee's email traffic. In order to be able to legally access e-mail traffic, many companies prohibit private use of the business e-mail account.

Monitoring and data storage

From 10,000 contract customers, e-mail providers in Germany are obliged to provide technology for forwarding e-mails, so-called SINA boxes, which has been regulated by the Telecommunications Surveillance Ordinance (TKÜV) according to Section 88 TKG since 2005 .

After obtaining a court order, the public prosecutor's office can have the provider hand over the entire e-mail inbox and forward the incoming and outgoing e-mails over a certain period of time. This is not necessary for e-mail providers in the United States: the US secret service NSA (National Security Agency) is permitted by the Patriot Act to analyze and monitor e-mails and telephone calls from foreigners without a court order.

According to § 111 and § 112 TKG, a telecommunications provider in Germany has the obligation to save personal data ( master data ) on telephone numbers, email addresses or other connection identifiers. However, there is an exception for mail providers, according to which they do not have to collect any master data. If this data is collected, it must be made available to the law enforcement authorities even without a court order. For providers with more than 100,000 participants, the master data (if available) must be made available in the so-called "automatic information procedure". The data can then be queried by the authorities without the subscriber or provider having to be informed. In this process, the Federal Network Agency checks “the admissibility of the transmission only if there is a special reason for this”.

literature

  • Florian Meininghaus: Access to e-mails in criminal investigations.
  • Criminal Law in Research and Practice, Volume 111, Verlag Dr. Kovac, Hamburg, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8300-3158-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Urs Mansmann: Postmaster for everyone. Your own mail domain for small businesses and families . c't 3/2012 (heise online)
  2. ↑ GMX PressLounge: Visions
  3. ↑ “Google examines, 'scans', the incoming e-mails electronically and filters out advertising-relevant stimulus words. For example, the holiday mail from friends is garnished with suitable travel offers from Google's advertising partners. ”(Source: Better for free: E-Mail services ; magazine test 7/2009, p. 39)
  4. ^ Joerg Heidrich: Mail secrets - legal framework for private mail servers. c't 3/2012, p. 112.
  5. ^ Mirjam Hauck: E-mail surveillance: modern mail robbery . Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 26, 2007
  6. ↑ The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information: Data Protection and Telecommunications . September 2013. Page 103. Accessed February 11, 2015
  7. ↑ Karlsruhe restricts investigator access to user data . Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 24, 2012
  8. ↑ Marc Störing: partial victory for civil rights in Karlsruhe . c't, February 24, 2012 (heise online)