Bounced Emails Don't Show

[dah000]

I've tried bouncing emails to my Windows Mail account back to my Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts ... but I never seen anything arriving back at ANY of those web-based email sites. When I go through the bouncing process, everything seems to go just fine but nothing is ever received back at my Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo accounts. I'm just trying to prove that the "Bouncing" actually works.
Thanks

[stan_qaz]

I'll start off with my standard bounce warning

I should warn you, if you send a bounce message the person receiving it could make an effort to get your ISP to shut your net access off. Since you have engaged in e-mail forgery, abuse (read your ISP's AUP on that) of another Internet user and potentially gotten your ISP's server into the spamcop mail rejection database, they have a fair chance.

The problem is that MW sends the bounce message to the address that is put into the e-mail, sadly that is easily forged and well over 90% of the time isn't the one the mail came from. The address the spammer forges is one of someone he wants to have mail-bombed with bogus bounces or something random.

Bottom line, bouncing is unsafe for you, hell for the victim who had their address stolen and it doesn't bother the spammer in the least.

If you want something reasonably safe and very effective try the MW Spamcop.net reporting tool and FirstAlert.

If you want to see more on why your attempt to bounce isn't working enable logging (Help - About) and look at the socket log.

Most likely reason is that your ISPs are detecting the fact that you are forging e-mails with an address reserved for the ISPs admins and are refusing it.

You are far better off not using the bounce feature even to play with.

[TrustFire]

I've tried bouncing emails to my Windows Mail account back to my Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts ... but I never seen anything arriving back at ANY of those web-based email sites. When I go through the bouncing process, everything seems to go just fine but nothing is ever received back at my Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo accounts. I'm just trying to prove that the "Bouncing" actually works.
Thanks

Which flavor of MWP are you using - the V6 or the latest 2012?

If you're using the V6 ensure that bounce is enabled.

Edit:
Just tried bouncing to my own Windows Mail, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts with no issues whatsoever.

[Aanitanixon]

I've attempted to bounce emails from my Windows Mail account back to my Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts, but I've never had any luck with it. Everything appears to go smoothly when I bounce an email, but my Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo accounts never receive anything back. I'm merely attempting to demonstrate that "Bouncing" is effective.

[AlphaCentauri]

Honestly, bouncing isn't effective anymore. Servers that are configured correctly don't bounce emails that are sent to non-existent addresses -- they just drop them. So I'm not surprised a service like Gmail wouldn't send bounces to your inbox. The vast majority of them won't be emails you have sent, informing you that they didn't arrive. They will be spam that pretends to be bounces.

I don't use MW for bouncing. I use it for its filtering functions, which give me much more control over what I receive than if it left it to the discretion of my email provider.

[TrustFire]

Honestly, bouncing isn't effective anymore. Servers that are configured correctly don't bounce emails that are sent to non-existent addresses — they just drop them. So I'm not surprised a service like Gmail wouldn't send bounces to your inbox.

Well, bouncing is quite effective, here — I'm referring to my perfectly configured servers on Gmail which have absolutely no issue relaying bounces to various of my other IDs . . . 100% of the time.

I don't use MW for bouncing.

Bouncing is a useful MailWasher feature which I use regularly — but, only against legitimate Senders . . . never against spammers (obviously.)

[Digerati]

Not sure the point of necroing this old thread but I agree with AlphaCentauri.

Bouncing is not effective anymore. Why? We have to remember its purpose. The original purpose of the MWP bounce feature was to get the sender to believe your email address was invalid so they'd remove your email address from their mailing lists and stop sending you more emails.

You certainly can bounce emails but the feature is ineffective because the actual sender most likely will not get the bounced message. And even if the human sender does get the bounce, odds are (unless they know you personally), they will do nothing about it.

The more likely scenario is with spam, the bounce will go to a spoofed sender (not the spammer) - and that's only if their email provider accepts the bounce. As AC, noted, many do not and instead just dump it in the bitbucket.

And besides, spammers are constantly changing the sender's email address anyway.

If the sender is a "legitimate" advertiser, odds are it is not a monitored account so the bounce/reply will be ignored, never seen by a human at all.

have absolutely no issue relaying bounces to various of my other IDs . . . 100% of the time.

Well of course there's no issue. AlphaCentauri didn't say it didn't work. He said it is not effective at stopping emails being sent to you from that address.

So while the bounce feature may indeed bounce back the email, the majority of the time it will not result in no further emails from that sender.

The only real exception is if you are trying stop your ex-spouse from hounding you for money - but even then it assumes their ISP does not just dump it.

So bouncing really only is effective for (1) people who know you personally, (2) use a legitimate (not spoofed) return address, and (3) whose ISP accepts bounced messages.

[TrustFire]

have absolutely no issue relaying bounces to various of my other IDs . . . 100% of the time.

He said it is not effective at stopping emails being sent to you from that address.

Nope, he said nothing of that sort — you seem to have gotten yourself confused.

Can you quote the part where he's supposed to have said, "it is not effective at stopping emails being sent to you from that address."

So while the bounce feature may indeed bounce back the email, the majority of the time it will not result in no further emails from that sender.

The intention of bouncing back an e-mail from legitimate Senders is never . . . for the result of — "no further emails from that sender."

The intention of bouncing back an e-mail from legitimate Senders is to indicate to such Senders that their sent mail was never received . . . in the first place.

The only real exception is if you are trying stop your ex-spouse from hounding you for money - but even then it assumes their ISP does not just dump it.

Nah, nah ... there are many, many more exceptions — just citing a few examples of legitimate Senders:—

• present spouse
• future spouse(s)
• ex-mistress(es)
• present mistress(es)
• future mistress(es)
• boss(es)
• employee(s)
• colleague(s)
• friend(s)
• <insert here anyone else who validates the term — legitimate Senders>

So bouncing really only is effective for (1) people who know you personally, (2) use a legitimate (not spoofed) return address, and (3) whose ISP accepts bounced messages.

Yeah, there . . . you get it — this is what I've been trying to emphasize.

Bouncing is a very useful MailWasher feature which is very effective, for me because:—

1. I use it only against legitimate Senders (regardless of whether they "know me personally" . . . or not,) and
2. None of my (Gmail or non-Gmail) e-mail accounts fail to relay or "drop" MailWasher bounces — have mentioned this more than 11 years ago (on my first response of this topic) and bouncing continues its winning streak . . . to this day.

ps:—
There's a very compelling reason why the term legitimate Senders was underlined . . . on my previous post.

[Digerati]

I paraphrased, implied and inferred, just as you did.

You made a point in your reply to AC that "your" bounces from "your" legitimate accounts to "your" other legitimate accounts, successfully bounce with "absolutely no issues". Do you really believe he was referring to that scenario in his comment?

I would hope you can see that your scenario is the exception since MailWasher's core purpose is about dealing with "spam" messages. I have to assume your own emails sent to yourself would not be considered as spam - at least not to you.

If that is not understood then it is not me confused here.

Nah, nah ... there are many, many more exceptions

Oh come-on. This is just being argumentative again. You know I used "ex-spouse" to illustrate the point. Was it really necessary for me to have left out "only"? Or to instead add "and the like" for you to understand the point?

Of course it could be an ex-friend or another of your pedantic examples. The point clearly was, it would be for a sender you already had a personal connection with.

So once again, the point remains the same. Sure, the bounce feature in MailWasher "functions" - that is, it will send (or at least attempt to send) the email back to the return address listed in the header. But is that "effective" at stopping future "spam" messages? No.

Equally ineffective would be continuing this necroed topic. So I will do my part to let it return back to the depths of dead topics from which it was dredged up.

[TrustFire]

You made a point in your reply to AC that "your" bounces from "your" legitimate accounts to "your" other legitimate accounts, successfully bounce with "absolutely no issues". Do you really believe he was referring to that scenario in his comment?

Of course . . . yes!

In his response to Aanitanixon . . . AlphaCentauri missed the point that Aanitanixon was actually reporting a failure of his bouncing with "his" own legitimate Windows Mail account against "his" own other legitimate accounts namely . . . Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo.

AlphaCentauri presumed that Aanitanixon was referring to bouncing against spam . . . whereas Aanitanixon was bouncing against "his" own legitimate e-mail accounts.

I paraphrased, implied and inferred, just as you did

No, not really — you, too . . . completely missed the point just as AlphaCentauri did.

Whenever anyone utters the word "bounce", you guys pounce on that person and unnecessarily pigeonhole bouncing with spam.

I would hope you can see that your scenario is the exception since MailWasher's core purpose is about dealing with "spam" messages. I have to assume your own emails sent to yourself would not be considered as spam - at least not to you.
If that is not understood then it is not me confused here.

Sure . . . MailWasher's core purpose might be dealing with spam messages — but then, what's our core purpose . . . as accomplished & hardened βeta-testers, are we the slaves or the Masters? Do you indeed restrict yourself to the core purpose for which Developers code-write their programs (not limited to Firetrust & MailWasher?)

You're the one who is clearly confused . . . why do you insist on compartmentalizing bouncing with spam — it can easily be employed for a more innovative purpose . . . unless you prefer to slave it out.

The point clearly was, it would be for a sender you already had a personal connection with.

Nope — for what do you need this "connection" . . . do we wanna marry that Sender???

There's no need really, for any prior connection with a Sender . . . s/he can even be an enemy, for crying-out aloud (so long as s/he meets all criteria for being flagged as a legitimate Sender — now . . . that was the whole point.)

So once again, the point remains the same. Sure, the bounce feature in MailWasher "functions" - that is, it will send (or at least attempt to send) the email back to the return address listed in the header. But is that "effective" at stopping future "spam" messages? No.

There you go . . . again!

Can't you just stop pigeonholing bouncing with spam — there's no correlation between those two.

[gingbat]

hey guys, how about we get back to the problem........

Regardless of what you use bouncing for, it should work as long as the email account provider allows it....

However.... there is an issue with both restoring emails and bouncing mail for Hotmail and Yahoo accounts we are working on, seems that if using OAUTH for these the connection to the server fails.... it's resolved for Yahoo accounts in the latest beta, but not for Hotmail ones yet.

Bounce should still work fine for Gmail though, check your settings look like the below screenshot:

download.png (31.34 KiB) Viewed 1055 times

If no better, check and/or post your "MWPapp_Restore.log" file which is in the Help>>User Files>>Logs folder, it should tell us what's going on.

(if you post inline, ensure you XXX out any personal data including email addresses).