To: WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:12:17 -0500 Subject: [WSFA] Re: Email problems From: Ron Kean <ronkean at juno.com> Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> On Wed, 12 Dec 2012 23:36:59 -0500 (EST) "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes: > For the past eight days, three email addresses on this list have > been > rejecting all email: > > Elaine Brennan elaine.brennan at worldnet.att.net > Scott Hofmann shofmann at mindspring.com > Gayle Surrette davinci at chesapeake.net > > Any idea what's going on? It seems unlikely that those three > unrelated people on three different ISPs would all just happen to > cancel their Internet accounts on the same day. And also unlikely > that all three would be so rude as to do so without unsubscribing > from the list or giving me a change of address notice first, > leaving > me to view lots of error messages and guess at what's going on and > what they want done. > I manage a yahoogroup with dozens of members, and bounced messages commonly occur. There are two kinds of bouncing, 'soft bouncing', which is more common, and 'hard bouncing', which is less common. After a few bounces, Yahoo automatically stops sending the list messages to the bouncing address, and sends an inquiry to the address, asking if the recipient wants to resume delivery. If so, the recipient just needs to reply to that message to automatically resume delivery. Otherwise, the address remains suspended from the yahoogroup indefinitely, unless the group manager intervenes to resume delivery, or intervenes to send another inquiry. I know from experience that messages can bounce even if the address is good, because on a few rare occasions my address has bounced as seen by my yahoogroup, when as far as I know my email was otherwise working properly. Is it possible that the 'from' address WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net or domain has been blacklisted by some ISP or group of ISPs? You could try sending a direct message to those people from another domain, or ask someone else to do that on your behalf. If the bouncing is inconvenient for you, you could just unsubscribe them after making an attempt to message them directly and getting no response. Then if they notice that the WSFA list is not getting to them, and if it matters to them at all, they would contact you. I doubt that members of a list such as this would normally have any inkling that it is rude to cancel their email address without first unsubscribing from their email lists, since most people don't manage an email list. For yahoogroups, bouncing does not inconvenience the manager at all, as it normally gets handled automatically by yahoo, as I described. Perhaps you could implement a protocol which automatically unsubscribes an address after a certain number of bounces. It does seem unlikely that three addresses in this group would be cancelled all on the same day. Ron Kean . ____________________________________________________________ Fast, Secure, NetZero 4G Mobile Broadband. Try it. http://www.netzero.net/?refcd=NZINTISP0512T4GOUT2