Email and Digital Services
Email and Digital Services
This domain tests practical email etiquette and India's digital public services. Expect questions on address fields, protocols, phishing, digital signatures and payment apps.
Core rules
- An email address is local-part@domain, e.g. [email protected]. To is the primary recipient; Cc is visible to all recipients; Bcc hides recipients from others. Reply goes to the sender; Reply All includes To and Cc recipients.
- SMTP sends outgoing mail; POP3 downloads mail and often removes it from the server; IMAP keeps mail synchronized on the server. Attachments are encoded for transfer and may be blocked by size or type.
- Digital services include e-governance portals, DigiLocker for issuing/storing documents, UMANG for many government services, and UPI for instant bank-to-bank payments. UPI uses a virtual payment address (VPA) and a UPI PIN; NPCI operates UPI. A digital signature uses a certificate and cryptographic keys, unlike a scanned signature.
Worked example
A notice must reach 50 parents without revealing their addresses. Put the parents in Bcc, put your own address in To, and write the message once. Reasoning: Bcc recipients receive the mail but their addresses are hidden from other recipients; Cc would expose them. If a parent must see other recipients, Cc is appropriate, but privacy rules usually favour Bcc.
Traps
Reply All can send unintended mail to everyone. Bcc is not visible, but it is not encryption. POP3 and IMAP are for receiving, not sending. Never share a UPI PIN or OTP; a request to 'verify' by entering a PIN is phishing. DigiLocker is not a payment app, and a scanned signature is not a digital signature.