Email lost in space?
December 6, 2009 9:28 AM Subscribe
Where does email go when it's sent and then lost in the ether?
I recently read -- or think I remember reading -- an article wherein the author explored where lost email goes - not lost in your email software, but lost in space once it's been sent. Now a friend wants to see the article and I can't find it anywhere and can't seem to Google it, either. Does this ring a bell with anyone?
I recently read -- or think I remember reading -- an article wherein the author explored where lost email goes - not lost in your email software, but lost in space once it's been sent. Now a friend wants to see the article and I can't find it anywhere and can't seem to Google it, either. Does this ring a bell with anyone?
Imagine that email works like someone giving a package to their doorman, who brings the package to their friend's doorman, who delivers it to the final recipient.
If your doorman can't take the package, he tells you immediately (eg, your mail client).
If your doorman cannot find the other doorman (you wrote the building's address incorrectly, or the other doorman never shows up for work), he will come back and tell you so. You can ignore this message from him (eg with a spam filter), so you'll never find out that the package didn't make it. He'll still try delivering the original package for a few more days and then finally trash it.
If your friend's doorman accepts the package, that generally means it got to the right building (email service provider). If your friend claims to never get the package, either the doorman decided it was junkmail on their behalf and put it in the trash, or the final recipient did it without realizing it (eg, an inbox rule).
If the "lost" email doesn't make it to it's destination mailbox, it lives on for up to a week and then gets deleted. If it makes it to the end recipient's mail client and lands in the wrong folder (a folder other than Inbox), it could live there forever.
posted by popechunk at 10:19 AM on December 6, 2009 [2 favorites]
If your doorman can't take the package, he tells you immediately (eg, your mail client).
If your doorman cannot find the other doorman (you wrote the building's address incorrectly, or the other doorman never shows up for work), he will come back and tell you so. You can ignore this message from him (eg with a spam filter), so you'll never find out that the package didn't make it. He'll still try delivering the original package for a few more days and then finally trash it.
If your friend's doorman accepts the package, that generally means it got to the right building (email service provider). If your friend claims to never get the package, either the doorman decided it was junkmail on their behalf and put it in the trash, or the final recipient did it without realizing it (eg, an inbox rule).
If the "lost" email doesn't make it to it's destination mailbox, it lives on for up to a week and then gets deleted. If it makes it to the end recipient's mail client and lands in the wrong folder (a folder other than Inbox), it could live there forever.
posted by popechunk at 10:19 AM on December 6, 2009 [2 favorites]
All of this depends upon you having put the correct addresses in From: and To:. If you screw that up, all manner of things can happen.
posted by popechunk at 10:20 AM on December 6, 2009
posted by popechunk at 10:20 AM on December 6, 2009
In the extreme case where everything goes wrong, it ends up in the Bit Bucket.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:05 PM on December 6, 2009
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:05 PM on December 6, 2009
Response by poster: Thanks! So I take it nobody else remembers seeing an article about this recently? Maybe I dreamed it.
posted by MaudB at 5:19 PM on December 6, 2009
posted by MaudB at 5:19 PM on December 6, 2009
In addition to Mach5's comprehensive server-side list, my experience is that:
* 97% of "lost" emails are in the recipient's Spam folder.
* 2% of "lost" emails are a lie.
* The remaining 1% of lost emails were silently deleted by the recipient's email client as spam.
posted by ErikaB at 9:26 PM on December 6, 2009
* 97% of "lost" emails are in the recipient's Spam folder.
* 2% of "lost" emails are a lie.
* The remaining 1% of lost emails were silently deleted by the recipient's email client as spam.
posted by ErikaB at 9:26 PM on December 6, 2009
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- gets delivered
- gets deferred/blocked by the recipients mail server (no thanks, you're a spammer/mailbox doesn't exist/server too busy) in which case it gets held on the senders mailserver until the queue is cleared or enough time has passed (the sender should get notification). in this case the MTA will keep trying a set number times to send it and then give up completely.
- your mailserver doesn't send it (queue full, out of space, badly configured, net is down) in which case the mail possibly queued or dropped and your email client should alert you.
RFC 821, SMTP Protocol (August 1982)
posted by Mach5 at 9:46 AM on December 6, 2009 [2 favorites]