COMARA News [R] - Email Woes - 16 Nov 2004

This is emailing 2. I woke up this morning to find 182 bounced emails
in the COMARA webmail inbox. Thanks for the replies I got from some 
of you. If you have corrections for your email address, please send 
it to webmaster@comara.org so it won't get lost in the bounce pile.

You may receive several copies of this email during the next week. 
It is not a mistake, but an attempt to find a reliable way for 
COMARA to be able to send a newsletter to all members. This is the 
first attempt and will use a new feature of the web site.

Email was once both easy to send, and reliable. During the early days 
of the internet, every server attempted to reliably deliver email. 
When delivery was impossible, the message returned to the sender 
indicated the reason for the problem.

The situation today is very different - both for sender and recipient.
Actions taken by service providers and individuals to reduce spam have
also made it very difficult to reach working email addresses. There
are at least five reasons for email failure.
  1 - The email address is wrong or no longer valid.
  2 - The inbox is full.
  3 - The recipient has invoked spam control that blocks incoming mail.
  4 - The email service is blocking mail from a list of IP addresses.
  5 - A mail server is temporarily out of service.

Mail returned for either reason 3 or 4 may not give the actual reason.
This newsletter may be sent using three services to try to identify
providers that are blocking an IP address. Mail can be sent from the 
COMARA webmail service, the COMARA web site, and another web site that 
is registered to me.  

You shouldn't see many differences other than one character enclosed 
in brackets in the subject line. [C], [W], or [R] indicates the 
path used. (Each uses a different IP address). Mail sent using
webmail uses the BCC field for distribution. Mail from the web site
can be individually addressed using the TO field.

I'm sorry to bother you with all this, but the only way to learn what
problems we are having is to send email using alternate services and
track any returned emails. I'll let you know of progress in a future
newsletter.

Ron Garlow
COMARA Webmaster
webmaster@comara.org