To be able to send and receive e-mail you need to set up an e-mail account. You are then given an e-mail address. This is easy to understand when you know what the parts of it mean, in fact it is just like your home address. Note: There are a number of different ways to create an email address using all sorts of combinations of names, numbers and characters in front of the @ sign. Hotmail is a popular email program. A hotmail address might look like rik_smith@hotmail.co.uk or smithr@hotmail.co.uk.