missing emails during power outtage?

During yesterday's power outtage were emails sent to our DH accounts bounced?

I was without email for about 5 hours, and this morning when I came in I had a suspiciously low amount of mail. It is possible, that is all there was, but I usually get enough spam in a 5 hour time period to choke a horse.

Thanks for any insight.

I'm experiencing the same here as well.

I *know* I am, as I'm missing emails I sent to myself from work. And they didn't bounce, they just disappeared.

In reply to:

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During yesterday's power outtage were emails sent to our DH accounts bounced?

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I'm wondering the same thing. I received only about 5% of my usual email load; however, it could be a coincidence.

"I'm missing emails I sent to myself from work. And they didn't bounce, they just disappeared."

That is definitely troubling. While I am not terribly concerned about my personal emails. That does mean my customers lost email - NOT GOOD.

> That does mean my customers lost email - NOT GOOD.

Whilst not wishing to add to your worries, let me say it is insane to rely on the DH email system for anything serious. There are just so many ways it loses mail. It only takes a customer to go on holiday and let his mailbox overfill, or gets a virus/spam attack, and the system can throw away all further incoming messages (no, not bounce them). I once lost an entire mailbox-full when a bug in the panel erased instead of edited the mailbox. Last week the Junk Filter was discarding messages because, according to Support, an essential server script wasn't running.

DH are smart people and I'm sure they'll get around to fixing the mail system up some time, but until then, beware.

I don't know of any lost email to my domain. I keep track of the "health" of my email by sending test messages every 30min, and I eventually received all the tests.

Relying on a lack of spam is not a good indicator of lost email, because spammers will generally give up if the first attempt is unsuccessful. Legitmate mail senders will hold the mail an retry after a period of time.

True about spammers, but not so true a blanket statement about legitimate mail senders. After all, I was sending to myself; that's pretty legitimate! But I do think that the 5.5 hours my server was down was probably enough to make the server I was sending from stop trying, and I do think that the standard is more like 48 hours.

Agreed. As you said it is more typical that the sending server would keep trying for 48 hours, rather than give up after 5-6. Also, it is more typical that it would bounce the message, rather than just drop it. So it is strange that your test messages just disappeared.

Yeah. :-