March 2006
Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
Welcome to the March! It's been a busy start to 2006. I took a lot of support calls this past month concerning email delivery problems. So for this months newsletter, I thought I would enlighten my readers on some of the reasons an email will bounce.
Sometimes, the receiver is using a service that limits the amount of email they can receive. I have a friend with this problem. The organization she works for has set the mailbox size to something so low that just a few small attachments will cause all other incoming email to be 'returned to sender'. Why? Her mailbox is full. Similar to a bucket of water, once the bucket is full, it doesn't matter how badly you want to add more water, it isn't going to stay in the bucket! Fortunately, the sender is alerted that the email was not received. The bounce message will say something like Mailbox full, or Quota Exceeded.
You might receive a bounce message with an attachment for emails you have not sent. Be very careful. The attachment is normally a carrier of a virus.
Sometimes you receive a bounce message for emails you haven't sent. This is most probably the cause of a 'spoofed' from address. The same way I can mail a real letter and put someone else's return address on it, spammers and virus propagators have figured out a way to use your address. This is annoying. I don't have a cure for this problem.
Sometimes it is a real bounce. You might receive a message similar to: