June 14, 2000

People and their stupid email accounts
   by stacy <pfftnet@stacy.pfft.net>

I am the manager for a few mailing lists. A couple of these lists have a considerable number of people who are subscribed. Most of them subscribe and unsubscribe every so often without incident. Whether they post or not, or filter all the mail from the list to the bit bucket is really none of my concern. I only care about what the list sees.

The manager is the unfortunate person who receives all the bounce messages when something from the list is unable to get through to a subscribed email address. Under normal circumstances, a bounce might be the result when the mailbox has reached quota or if there is a DNS problem, or some similar, temporary problem. There are some individuals, though, who have a myriad of email problems, and I get to find out all about them.

I understand that sometimes people change their ISP or their job, and they forget to change their subscribed address on all their lists. That's forgiveable. Maybe they couldn't get the mail forwarded even if they wanted to, that's ok too. However, I am starting to have no sympathy at all for this one individual on a few lists of mine who changes email addresses at least twice a month. This person never remembers to unsubscribe when he's about to change addresses either, so I get stuck with all the bounces. Usually they are "no such address" or "user not found." Today I got one that was over quota - a new one for this guy, but unsurprising. Trouble probably follows him.

What on earth could make somebody change email addresses so often? I think he can't possibly be changing jobs or ISPs all the time. Maybe he uses all the different free email services and just swaps them out on a whim. I don't get it, but it's really making me go PFFT!

Published: June 14, 2000
Editor: stacy