The Problem of Undeliverable Emails.

General

There are a number of reasons for your email to fail to be delivered. Some of these reasons have nothing to do with your email or how it works, which can make it frustrating and confusing. This article will discuss various reasons why your email system may fail to work properly or "appear" to not be working properly.

How it all works.

I will avoid getting too technical, but it would be helpful if you had a basic understanding as to what happens to your email when it is sent. So, the following is a short narrative of a typical email trip.

1. An email is composed and has at least one recipient.
2. The email client contacts the email server and uploads the email.
3. The email server does the following:
   1. It looks at the domain of each email address.
   2. It queries the DNS system for an MX record (Mail eXchange) for that domain.
   3. If successful, it uses that reply to contact the email server of that domain.
   4. If successful, it asks this email server if they have this email address registered.
   5. If approved, it uploads the message to that server.
4. Receiving email server runs spam and virus checking on message.
5. The receiving server places the message into that users "inbox"
6. The receiving person's email client contacts the server and uploads the message.

As you can see, there are multiple points for possible failure. In addition, there are multiple "players" in the process:

1. Sender's client email software
2. Sender's email server
3. DNS servers and access to the correct DNS server.
4. General communications (bandwidth, routers, etc..)
5. Recipient's email server and its spam and virus filters
   
6. Recipient's client email software

Each of these players must be configured correctly and use the same communications protocols.

What goes wrong.

Before spamming and email viruses were so prolific, the most common reasons an email did not arrive had to do with some "disconnect" between the various "players" in the process. Different communication protocols due to version differences between older software and newer software often caused an error and a failure.

Today those issues are minor in comparison to the spam and virus checkers. Many of these issues are outlined in a document you can request:  "Email Spam and Viruses". The key issue is that because of the proliferation of spamming and email viruses, many email servers are becoming so strict with filtering spam that very little email ever makes it through to the recipient. This has made email even more unreliable that it was before.

A new wrinkle

During 2006 an old/new problem was beginning to become common. Old, because it has been a problem for a number of years, New, because it is becoming ubiquitous and is creating new headaches for email servers. This is basically the "undelivered spam".

What happens is that spammers use legitimate domains and attach real and bogus "users" to those domains. They use these addresses to hide behind. The problem occurs when the receiving email server does not have a global recipient for that domain, and it has to bounce it as "undeliverable". Therefore, you get the bounced emails.

The frustration is that you start wondering if your legitimate email is getting through and you now have a flood of bogus "undelivered email" messages to wade through.

How can I tell the difference?

There are a number of things you can quickly look for to determine if this undelivered email is real or bogus. Following are some "bogus" red flags:

1. The returned email contains the text of an email you DO NOT recognize.
2. The sender from your domain is not a legitimate email account
3. There is no "original" email text.
4. The email contains an invitation to "view" the problem email. DO NOT click this link!!! DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK! (Repeat ten times).

Summary and Suggestions

This all sounds very gloom and doom for email and, yes, it is a serious problem. Part of the process is accepting and understanding what is happening so that you can effectively work around it. Basically, it comes down to using an effective strategy to minimize the effect of any of these issues. Following are SonicSpider's recommendations:

• DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINK IN AN EMAIL!
• Upgrade and use the latest Email Client Software.
• Do NOT use email for critical communications.
• Keep spam and virus checkers up to date.
• Practice "safe emailing" and be cautious about where you enter your email address on forms and e-commerce sites.
• Keep a "honey-pot" email address that is the global recipient of your domain and is the email address you use for any questionable sites. At your convenience scan these emails for any legitimate messages and then dump the entire batch.
• Understand the process and what spammers are doing so that you can be a smart and aware email user.
• DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINK IN AN EMAIL!

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Posted by John Moore on April 13, 2007 9:09:00 PM PDT #