Why your email didn't get through

[bunn]

Sometimes it feels like there is only one reason that your email didn't get through to its recipient, and that reason is "it's  all bunn's fault".    However, occasionally there are Problems On The Internet that are not down to me and the cleft stick with which, of course,  I personally hand-deliver all emails that are in any way related to any

Comments

[ladyofastolat]

I do wish more wrongly addressed email bounced back. No matter how clearly I tell people that my work email is firstnameDOTsurname@blahblahblah, about half the promised emails never reach me. With those that I'm a position to chase up, it's usually because they've got the blahblahblah right, but missed out the dot, so my employer's email fire demon has consumed it to dust, without bothering to let the recipient know.

A few years ago, I failed to receive any of the many emails that were circulating about what was probably the first Butteller, back before it had a name. The reason? The subject heading included the word "traveller," and at some point in the past, I'd had an enormous amount of emails telling me about raves, so I'd foolishly put a block on the "rave" letter combination, without thinking through the consequences. Senders don't have the monopoly of foolishness. :-)

[bunn]

The problem with bouncing incorrectly addressed messages is that an awful lot of emails don't come *from* correct addresses.
From addresses on emails include :
1) noreply email addresses from organisations like banks, which want to be able to send you stuff but not risk having to deal with you replying chattily with your full bank details and pin number

2) addresses that have been entered wrong or have been removed.

3) and this is a biggy, forged email addresses used by spammers some of which actually belong to innocent third parties, and some of which don't exist.

So if your server bounces an email sent to an incorrect address, you may well get the bounce bouncing back to you. This can very quickly build up into an insane game of pingpong which eventually causes the entire server to grind to a halt. Once this happens a couple of times, the admin tires of clearing out the queue and turns off bouncing.

[tovaglia]

This made me laugh a lot! thank you!

[bunn]

Thank *you!*

I thought of one more that has to be a popular one :
"Sender lied when they said they had already sent the email"

:-D

[lil_shepherd]

Yes, and sometimes the NAUGHTY word is totally innocent. I've been caught by this a couple of times. Once, not on e-mail but on the old BBC messageboards, where I couldn't figure why it wouldn't allow a post about Star Wars, which was actually because it contained the word Dagobah. Then, much more embarrassingly, at work, where it trapped a messages that, horror of horrors, had an attachment that contained the words 'Maine Coon.'

[bunn]

I would hope that nowadays most email filters would be a bit more intelligent than that. They can usually at least pick up spaces around a word and determine context for terms like 'maine coon'

There are always manual filters created by users, like the one ladyofastolat mentions above, but as the automated filters get better, the old fashioned bad word lists tend to be less used.

(I do know how to spell 'naughty': it was a misspelling for (attempted) comic effect. )

[lil_shepherd]

No, no, I didn't mean to correct your spelling (which I wouldn't dare as I can't spell and typo all the time). The capslock was meant to be a sarky comment on the filters and those who program them!