Page 396 - Beginning Programming with Pyth - John Paul Mueller

confused because the letter contains sender and receiver information as well. This information appears in the letter just like the address information that appears in a business letter — it’s for the benefit of the viewer. When you send a business letter, the postal delivery person doesn’t open the envelope to see the address information inside. Only the information on the envelope matters.
It’s because the information in the email letter is separate from its information in the envelope that nefarious individuals can spoof email addresses. The envelope potentially contains legitimate sender information, but the letter may not. (When you see the email in your email application, all that is present is the letter, not the envelope — the envelope has been stripped away by the email application.) For that matter, neither the sender nor the recipient information may be correct in the letter that you see onscreen in your email reader.
The letter part of an email is actually made of separate components, just as the envelope is. Here is a summary of the three components:
Sender: The sender information tells you who sent the message. It contains just the email address of the sender.
Receiver: The receiver information tells you who will receive the message. This is actually a list of recipient email addresses. Even if you want to send the message to only one person, you must supply the single email address in a list.
Message: Contains the information that you want the recipient to see. This information can include the following:
From: The human-readable form of the sender. To: The human-readable form of the recipients.
CC: Visible recipients who also received the message, even though they aren’t the primary targets of the message.
Subject: The purpose of the message.
Documents: One or more documents, including the text message that appears with the email.