Email Problems – Common Causes For Email Returns and Bounce-backs

My email is driving me crazy! Have you said this before? Have you received that unwanted 'Unable to send …' email from Mailer Daemon? We can not stand that guy!

It is frustrating to try to send / receive an email message to someone only to have mailer.DAEMON email you that it's not going to happen for reasons that you can not, nor do you want to learn how, to decipher. What are we to do? In this world of instant results combined with all the conveniences of modern technology, we rely on our email to work with the utmost efficiency.

By the way, did you know that 90% of all email is SPAM?

After many hours of online research and phone tech support (some good, some not so good), we have come up with the most common causes for email returns or 'bounce backs' as well as common practices amongst many email servers / providers out there .

  1. Email with hyperlinks, website addresses, advertisements, custom signatures, free emoticons or screensavers, etc. can be considered spam by many email providers and then blocked.
  2. Once blocked, your email servers' SPAM filters continuously check and re-check emails that are blocked- this is an automated occurrence – and a more in-depth check based on the IP address it came from.
  3. It is determined whether this sender is really email SPAM or actually following the rules and guidelines, has some hyperlinks, is offering a legitimate product / service and is NOT SPAM.
  4. They then unblock those that pass the test. '

Upon researching a variety of email servers – free, paid or included with your Internet Service Provider-all offer about the same set up, 10MG transfer space, 250MG storage space, Webmail access, some offer upgrades for more transfer or storage space. They all have their own spam filters that each email goes through before going on to the receiver's mailbox. These filters change continuously to keep up with changing spam techniques. Some emails get marked as spam because of hyperlinks, they are known spammers, even the fact that someone at the company received spam unknowingly and then sent it on to a bunch of other people's mailboxes and like the bunny – it keeps going and going and going . However, the innocent sender ends up later blocked on a different email server until the server can resolve the issue and unblock them.

The emails that are blocked are not stored and re-sent once the sender has un-blocked them. They are gone forever in cyber-space. Therefore, we all have to take a deep breath, hit resend and go on. If you have hyperlinks or free advertising in your email, you may want to consider revising or removing them or calling your email provider to see if they can unblock a specific link – for example, the link to your web site. You can also call your email provider and forward them the error message received and they may be able to resolve it quite quickly.

Now, if you're sending something important and it just has to absolutely, positively have to get there, our suggestion, consider all the forms of communication we have. Back it up with a phone call, a text message, an IM, post a message on Twitter or Facebook, or on your blog or their blog, send a FAX, send a postcard, … well, you get the idea. At least your recipient will know to expect something and when not received, will let you know.

And, remember the war on SPAM rages on.