p4o2 wrote:
> I sent an email with a bad address in the "to" and a valid one in the
> "cc". The email bounced but I was wondering if the "cc" went OK?
No, not likely. But the problem is that terms like 'bounced' are
ambiguous and result in having to explain the term with additional
helper terms like 'hard bounce' and 'soft bounce'.
Typically the process involving what some refer to as the smtp envelope
is that the sending agent, which in the case of webmail is an integrated
client/server creates an envelope with a MAIL FROM and RCPT TO and in
the example you have asked, the RCPT TO has both of the addresses - not
two individual mails. In fact, the distinction between the To and the CC
is somewhere else, in the DATA section.
A common transactional result of one address in the RCPT TO being bad is
that the mail gets a hard bounce -- which hard bounce is that the
transaction is rejected 'forthwith' and nobody gets the mail.
But sometimes it doesn't happen that way and whatever is the problem
with the address is not discovered until way down the line. The original
transaction was accepted, the server passed the mail down the line to
other servers in which case two servers individually accepted the mail
each for one mailbox.
Then one of the servers discovered that there was something wrong with
the mailbox that it accepted the mail for.
Some servers will 'turn around' and address a newmail to the From sender
with a delivery status notification failed -- the so-called soft bounce
which can cause trouble because the From might have been bogus like spam
for all the server knows.
In that case, one of the recipients would have gotten the mail and the
other not. But the first scenario is far more likely.
Unfortunately you did not provide us with the structure of the process
by which you learned that there was a problem with the address.
--
Mike Easter
|
Similar Threads
