On Wed, 21 Jun 2017, Rich Shepard wrote: > Very infrequently I learn that a message I sent was not received; at > least, the recipient did not see it. None of these bounced back to > me so I've no idea they were not received until I call the recipient > who wonders why they did not get the message. > > I suppose that google mail, and similar web-based domains, might > think that a word in my message represents spam, yet still I receive > no indication that the message did not go through. > > Is there a tool that can trace an outgoing message and determine > where it got lost if it does not reach the intended recipient?
It depends on three things: * whether you relay outbound mail through a smart host, * the setup of the mail server on the far end, * the user's junk/spam settings. If you use a smart host (e.g., your ISP's SMTP server) to relay your outbound mail, then you're at your ISP's mercy to know about delivery status. Maybe the mail admins will return bounces or otherwise notify you of them, maybe not. (There are, btw, good reasons not to.) A well-run mail server should reject spam during the SMTP transaction itself, and not after it's accepted delivery. If you send mail to madboa.com that gets marked as spam, for instance, you'll get a bounce message very quickly (and I'll never see the message). Finally, the remote user may have trained their spam filter aggressively -- and she may never take the time to check their junk folder. -- Paul Heinlein <> [email protected] <> https://www.madboa.com/ _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
