Been a very long time since I worked in IT, but I’m pretty sure at least some mail servers are configured to give up the attempt to deliver sent emails after x number of attempts have failed. Not 100% on this since mail wasn’t my thing, but I seem to vaguely recall that. If I’m right, then the emails most certainly are going somewhere - the “undelivered” graveyard.
This is marginally related but proton has a feature that tells when you when an email is still being retried, and when it gives up.
That email is called something like delayed mail (still being retried), and for a long time, my dumbass thought it was some feature that was being retired and I was like wtf why have they taken months to retire this feature.
Been a very long time since I worked in IT, but I’m pretty sure at least some mail servers are configured to give up the attempt to deliver sent emails after x number of attempts have failed. Not 100% on this since mail wasn’t my thing, but I seem to vaguely recall that. If I’m right, then the emails most certainly are going somewhere - the “undelivered” graveyard.
The RFC recommends that it should be retried for 5 days. Which is also the default in most mail servers.
However, many larger mail providers, including Microsoft, only do a single day before the mail bounces.
I wonder if this experience makes them reconsider keeping to the RFC recommendation.
I find the idea of Microsoft even considering following an open standard to be laughable on the face of it.
Yeah, that’s rather untypical for them.
Must be why the front fell off of Exchange.
Embrace, extend.
That could be a hacker movie plot.
“Oh no, the bad guy sent the info in an email! I know, let’s crash the servers until it gets undeliverable!”
First every hour, then every two, four, eight and then like once day for a a week . After that you get a ‘could not deliver this message’.
At least, that is how I setup my servers…
This is marginally related but proton has a feature that tells when you when an email is still being retried, and when it gives up.
That email is called something like delayed mail (still being retried), and for a long time, my dumbass thought it was some feature that was being retired and I was like wtf why have they taken months to retire this feature.
Anyway, proton retries for 48 hrs as well.
Can’t smtp do multiple hops through multiple smtp servers or MX (mail exchanges)? In which case, how would the client know, beyond the first hop?
Microsoft overrode the 24 hour limit to 48 hours to give themselves more time.
You make it sound like that’s a bad thing 😅