\u2026 and, no, it is NOT the reason you might think!<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll let you in on a little secret, the vast majority of us technical types HATE email! Why??? Because it causes more grief than almost any other application out there! And, no, it\u2019s not because email can be the harbinger of \u201creally bad things\u201d (although, as we all know, it certainly can be that). It is because email was never meant to be a \u201creliable protocol\u201d; in fact it is NOT a reliable protocol \u2013 never has been, never will be as long as all email servers follow the rules and protocols set in stone eons ago.<\/p>\n
What does it mean when I say it is not a \u201creliable\u201d protocol? Simple \u2013 it means that there is no guarantee that the email you send will actually get to the person you sent it to. There is nothing built in to the email protocols to ensure that delivery actually happens. Yes, you can ask for a \u201ctrace\u201d on your email (delivery receipt) but that by and of itself does not guarantee delivery. And then there are all the arcane messages that you can receive when something does go wrong. You know what they are like, cryptic and not truly helpful to you. And that\u2019s the rub, the messages are DESIGNED to be cryptic as the email server is not supposed to give out helpful information to the \u201cbad guys\u201d. Yeesh.<\/p>\n
When email fails the wrath of the Almighty tends to rain down on us IT types and we have to explain to all and sundry WHY the blessed email didn\u2019t go through. That\u2019s not easy as we have to decipher all the cryptic messages (No, the cryptic message is NOT meant to be an insult to you, sir, so please don\u2019t take it that way) and then figure out what went wrong. Lots of times it is purely user error although there are many, many things that can screw up that are out of the control of your techies. For instance, we are seeing lots of blacklisting lately on \u201cnew\u201d IP\u2019s that Shaw is handing out in Western Canada; the blacklisting is not because customer email servers are doing anything wrong, it is probably due to artefacts in various blacklists tied to where the IP\u2019s used to exist. Who knows but users get mightily exorcised when emails bounce and they get the \u201cnice\u201d terse message form their email server.<\/p>\n
So, the next time you get a bounced email and\/or the terse message from your email server, please take a second to reflect on things before you rain hell down on your IT staff. It will be appreciated by the techie types, believe me.<\/p>\n
Oh, and don\u2019t email me on this, it\u2019ll bounce \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"