> On 23 Mar 2021, at 01:13, Dave Crocker <dcroc...@bbiw.net> wrote: > > On 3/22/2021 11:04 AM, Laura Atkins via mailop wrote: >> However, if the mailbox owner logs in and reclaims it mail will start >> flowing again. > > In the theory, that makes the cited "554" SMTP problematic, since the failure > is not certain to be permanent.
But the SMTP transaction, as I tell marketers all the time, is about this message in this transaction. This message fails and should not be retried. If ’the mailbox will never come back at some point in the future’ were the criteria for issuing a permanent failure, then no one would every issue a 5xy. An address can ALWAYS come alive at some point in the future. All the rest of the things we do when talking about ‘bounce handling’ is trying to intuit, discover, and infer what to do with the next message to that address at scale. > In practice, given that the temporary problem could be quite long term -- or > even permanent -- it's probably best to give it a hard fail, to surface the > issue quickly, to the author. That’s assuming that mailing list bounces go to the author and not the list software. It’s not an assumption I would make. laura -- Having an Email Crisis? We can help! 800 823-9674 Laura Atkins Word to the Wise la...@wordtothewise.com (650) 437-0741 Email Delivery Blog: https://wordtothewise.com/blog
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