Sending and receiving Email

General Discussion
1

This is not a Linux question.

Bit of background first

I live in a holiday village, all the properties are owned by different people who choose to live or rent them. Every year we have meetings to discuss what happened over the last year and what plans are for the future. Also what it’s going to cost us for pools, tennis etc.

The syndicate who manages the village arranges the event and must notify every resident about the meeting with date, place agenda etc. By french law this must go out a set number of days before. They used to use laposte and recorded delivery which once collected at the post office, signed for they got a letter back to say job done.

Now to my question

The post has been replaced by electronic email again using acuse de reception. So they send, I open, they get a message saying its been opened. Job done. If I go to the meeting is another matter.

I am in dispute with the syndicate in our village because they said

“we sent it, so you must have got it”

I did not get the mail, for whatever reason, not in my mailbox, not in spam, nothing. I check several times a day and know enough about mail.

So, when you send email, it’s either delivered or not ?

If the address is wrong then it’s never going to get there

If the address is correct, in theory it’s delivered. But does my box say to the sender he got it but has not opened it, or only when I open it do they get the message. And, if I have a auto reply (on holiday) does that count as opened.

I emailed them and gave them another address, but they would not send me another copy as they claim it’s my fault.

I know I did not get it, nor did I go to the meeting, I have told them they have a faulty system but they blame me.

Comments please

2

Service provider server can accept the email but then spam/security filters can block, quarantine, and silently drop emails before they get to you. (it wouldn’t be placed in any of your folders)
It is common with aggressive protection by some providers and would explain why correct address and no bounce still results in non-delivery.

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3

Would the sender get a receipt to say delivered?

Even if I did not ?

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4

I would sure think not.

If you add their email address to your contacts that can prevent your email provider from blocking emails from them.

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5

Hi Paul,

From the internet I found this;
"The “Delivered” receipt means the message successfully reached the recipient’s messaging server or was accepted by one of their connected devices (like a Mac, iPad, or Apple Watch). The recipient may still not have seen it for several reasons: "

AI seems to confirm this by saying;

A delivery confirmation only means:
Their server handed the message to your server
It does not mean:
It reached your inbox
It avoided filters
It wasn’t silently dropped
You ever saw it

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6

Sending confirmations is fully optional; it’s just a recommendation.

Nowadays, many email providers deny accepting emails from servers without or with bad SPAM protection configuration. Keywords: SPF, DMARC, and DKIM. And they might consult blacklists.

A good starting point to check the related domains is https://mxtoolbox.com

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7

In this area I also have some trouble, without any solution.

A company I’m in contact with cannot be reached by mails sent from my domain, even if everything on my side is perfectly configured. My mail never got bounced or landed in their SPAM folder; they just vanished. This only happens with this particular recipient. The target is, you might guess it, an MS-Office world.

The only “solution” to bypass this was sending my mails using another provider, ProtonMail, in this case. Here everything works fine.

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8

Thanks for that link will investigate further, did a quick test and it showed errors on the server offered by my hosting company so will send the report to them for comments

Thanks for sharing that, good (or not) to know I am not alone, and someone with better technical skills in this area can also have issues.

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9

I sometimes send emails with delivery confirmtion and or return receipt requested options set. Delivery confirmation works sometimes (but not with Gmail addresses by default) and I almost never get return receipts back any more. So there’s no guarantee that any of that will work. If you’re lucky, sometimes you get a returned as undeliverable message from some mail servers when using an old or bad address.

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10

Really strange the mail from the syndic sent by ar24 service which as for proof of delivery have like magic started to arrive. I have not changed anything, except post here the question. And jump up an down at the sender of the mail. I now know the results of the meeting and who voted for what. But interesting of the 60 owners 20 did not attend the meeting or vote, were they like me and did not get the invitation. May never know. The main subject for me was voted against, had I been at the meeting I would have altered the information offered and imagine more would have voted with me as in previous years.

Such is life.

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11

I ran across a situation like this several years ago. Company A can email anyone they want except Company B. Company B can receive mail from everyone except Company A. Both are pointing to the other as the obvious issue.

It was neither. Company A had been using an ISP for their DNS years before but had since moved the domain to another ISP with new DNS servers that were authoritative. Company B was using that old ISP and their DNS. The ISP should have deleted the zone once they were no longer authoritative for it but they didn’t. So, they were giving incorrect answers to Company B with regard to Company A.

That took some digging.

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12

Interesting. But as I wrote. It’s just one (known) sender that cannot reach my domain. No bouncing, no error message, and no appearance in our mail server logs. Usually mail servers complain when they cannot deliver to one of the hosts stated in the MX records.

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13

My worry is the company that is used ar24 is part of the French Postal system and the government used them for distribution of fines for motoring offences. Speeding. Red lights. Parking etc. with those if you don’t receive and do you don’t pay the fine goes up after a set time until you pay.

14

Sounds to be a good way to make money. :open_mouth:
Vive la France!

15

Its not the fines that are the problem (for some) its the points on your licence thats gets most

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16

Fortunately Switzerland doesn’t have such an explicit point-collecting system, at least not officially.

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17

So for motoring offence what happens ? No fine no points, nothing ?

18

If it’s too heavy, you have to deposit your license for a while.

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