email going missing

It's come to my attention that I am having trouble with a few e-mails that have been sent to me just simply failing to arrive over the last 10 days or so. These aren't "oh I'm sure I sent it!" types, but genuine e-mails that HAVE come through on being forwarded susequently. There seems little point in raising a ticket at the moment, and I have posted on PUG with no response from PN.

Just wondered if anyone else has had the same problem?

I have had some that have been delayed.

But none have gone missing, at least not that I am aware of.

the only reason I know these were/are missing was because the relevant parties phoned me to see why I'd not answered!!

Thats why I added the 'not that I am aware of'

No one has contacted me to ask about any emails that maybe they were expecting a reply to.

Course it is always possible in view of the recent problems with email that some have gone AWOL.

Edited by cajef (Wed 13-Sep-06 13:32:36)

problem is that the last one to go missing was Monday 11th, so after everything was supposed to be fixed!

Indeed my wife has a sub account mailbox and sent two emails to her work account last night. One arrived but the other didn't. They both had virtually the same content and attachment (spreadsheets), and she hasn't had any error messages to her work mailbox, so I doubt the mail was blocked (likewise this is illogical as both would have been blocked).

Something is wrong by the look of it.

Its a pain when they just disappear as you can't examine the headers for problems. Does the one that has arrived show a delay anywhere (perhaps Plusnet or Messagelabs if used). If so I wonder if the other is stuck on the server somewhere.

In my case I am not aware of any email going missing recently, though even if it did I expect it would only have been spam anyway.

Are you suggesting that the missing mail is likely caused by a hyperactive spam filter at PlusNet Towers (improbable based on one report in this thread) or that all your mail is always spam?

Simon

Edited by deleted (Wed 13-Sep-06 16:10:27)

That 95% of the mail my domains now get are spam (since they were used for dictionary attacks a year or so ago).
I only tend to get about 5-10 valid emails a day and around 200-300 spam.

The Plusnet spam filter doesn't usually eat mail though as it just marks the mail and then forwards on to the mailbox (its an incoming filter not outgoing). The AV engine does hold mail but you also get an email about each mail that gets held.

I think there must be many people who wouldn't know if they weren't receiving a percentage of their email - and while they may discover eventually that some was sent but never arrived, that isn't guaranteed either.

Simon

You are right and email has never been a guaranteed method of communication. There are just too many servers along the way that can screw up and cause emails to go missing. Unfortunately if email just disappears into the ether (it has been known to happen with many ISPs over many years so isn't a Plusnet specific peoblem) then there is little way to find out which server was screwy since there is no header trace to follow.

I suspect this could be one of the reasons Plusnet require users to monitor the postmaster accounts. These emails tend to only go through 1 or 2 Plusnet servers before reaching the users rather than some unknown ones located anywhere in the world.