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UNDELIVERABLE E-MAIL

When a Notify Me message or other site-generated e-mail is undeliverable, the Class Creator e-mail server may attempt delivery several times.  Eventually, this fails and a "bounceback" report is generated to alert the Administrator about the condition.  Furthermore, the recipient classmate will see a prominent notice at the top of the homepages when they log in.  Follow the instructions in the notice.

Your email has bounced, action required!

Please confirm that [your e-mail address] is your correct email address. If not, Please Update Now.

If correct, send a verification email to yourself. Once received, you need to click the link in the email to complete verification.

Typically, no further action will be required as most bounce situations are temporary. However, if the email bounces persist, you may need to contact your email provider with these details to resolve the issue and repeat the verification process.

E-mail messages can bounce for a variety of reasons.  The two most common are:

  • the classmate has changed their e-mail address and the former e-mail address is no longer valid
  • the receiving e-mail server was temporarily down or inaccessible

For a bounce caused by the first condition, the classmate must update their contact information to reflect the new primary e-mail address, even though they can still log-in with the old address.  Click on Edit Contact Info found under the MEMBER FUNCTIONS menu.  The login e-mail address is the address to which all site-generated e-mail is sent and must be up to date.  After making a change to the primary (login) e-mail address, the classmate will receive a new e-mail verification opt-in message.  It is important to respond to this e-mail.

For a bounce caused by the second condition, the Administrator may ask Class Creator to clear the bounce.  No action is required by the classmate.

That said, many things might happen to e-mail messages send from the Class Creator e-mail server.

A bounce may occur indicating that the message was undeliverable.  This is perhaps the best possible situation, as we know that it wasn't delivered to the mailbox to which it was sent.

An e-mail server may silently discard the message.  No human will ever have seen it and no one gets a notification one way or another.

The message may be forwarded to a "catch-all" e-mail address.  Many e-mail servers have the ability to forward to one central address, e-mail that is sent to another address.  The idea here is that someone would then look at it and decide if it was really meant for some other recipient and forward it along.  Because of spam, this technique is less and less common, but it could happen.

The bottom line is that, if you see the bounce notice at the top of the homepage, follow the instructions to clear it and all will be well.

Last Update: 03-11-15