How is your email set up?

Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum

Help Support Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Madeleine

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 29, 2011
Messages
7,990
Reaction score
1
If you have your email going thru your website (innkeeper @ myinnsname.com) or similar do you get any and all emails addressed to 'any name' @ myinnsname.com or do you only get email addressed to valid emails addresses you have set up? ie - you would receive any email addressed to info @ myinnsname.com because that's one you've set up but you would not receive any email addressed to bozo @ myinnsname.com because bozo doesn't work there and doesn't have a valid email set up.
Or, do you receive any and all emails with your domain name in it?
Do you sort your emails before they hit your inbox? All valid user id emails go here, all potential spam (not valid user ids) go to another folder or separate email account.
Do your non-valid user ids send out a bounced notice or are they returned to the sender? Or do they just disappear into the ether?
Have you ever tested any of these scenarios by sending email to non-valid user ids on your domain?
I don't care where you read your emails, just if you think/know you are getting/not getting EVERY possible email that might get sent to you either with a correct email addy or an incorrect (misspelled) email addy.
 
We have 5 e-mail accounts through our web site...one of them is an [email protected] address and the other 4 are personal accounts with a [email protected]. We only get mail delivered to our in box if it is exactly addressed to one of the accounts. Most of our junk mail is filtered at the server and the junk that is missed at that end usually ends up in the junk folder on my desktop. Ocasionally I get the "Priests on Retreat" scam but our server does a good job filtering out most of the junk. It is amazing how our personal accounts get spammed....probably from DH, early on, giving his personal e-mail out when he was looking for information at a Computer World Trade Show. But again, the server takes care of that. It never makes it to my home computer desk top. I just check the server web-mail-filter every now and then to make sure that there is nothing of value that was labeled as spam by mistake.
I can access my mail (regular mail that is automatically sorted by account, as well as junk mail that would never make it to my desk top) from the server whenever we are away.
I am sure that we only get mail that is addressed exactly as it should, to a valid e-mail address. Have no idea what happens to stuff that is addressed incorrectly....like [email protected].
 
We have 5 e-mail accounts through our web site...one of them is an [email protected] address and the other 4 are personal accounts with a [email protected]. We only get mail delivered to our in box if it is exactly addressed to one of the accounts. Most of our junk mail is filtered at the server and the junk that is missed at that end usually ends up in the junk folder on my desktop. Ocasionally I get the "Priests on Retreat" scam but our server does a good job filtering out most of the junk. It is amazing how our personal accounts get spammed....probably from DH, early on, giving his personal e-mail out when he was looking for information at a Computer World Trade Show. But again, the server takes care of that. It never makes it to my home computer desk top. I just check the server web-mail-filter every now and then to make sure that there is nothing of value that was labeled as spam by mistake.
I can access my mail (regular mail that is automatically sorted by account, as well as junk mail that would never make it to my desk top) from the server whenever we are away.
I am sure that we only get mail that is addressed exactly as it should, to a valid e-mail address. Have no idea what happens to stuff that is addressed incorrectly....like [email protected]..
Can you do a test and send an email that is spelled incorrectly to see if it bounces back to the account it was sent from? I am curious. (And, of course, there is an irate guest story lurking in the wings!)
 
E-mails are only delivered to valid addresses I've set up at my domain.
Invalid e-mails are bounced back to the sender, not from my system but from the sender's Internet Service Provider, or from my own ISP (Suddenlink) with a "undeliverable" message. Invalid addresses never get to the point of coming to me. They're handled at a higher level.
Mail that comes in is first cleaned by the Suddenlink spam filters, then by my own spam software in my e-mail program. Things the software thinks are spam/junk go to a spam folder.
I scan the spam/junk folder daily to watch for "false positives".
 
E-mails are only delivered to valid addresses I've set up at my domain.
Invalid e-mails are bounced back to the sender, not from my system but from the sender's Internet Service Provider, or from my own ISP (Suddenlink) with a "undeliverable" message. Invalid addresses never get to the point of coming to me. They're handled at a higher level.
Mail that comes in is first cleaned by the Suddenlink spam filters, then by my own spam software in my e-mail program. Things the software thinks are spam/junk go to a spam folder.
I scan the spam/junk folder daily to watch for "false positives"..
Arkansawyer said:
E-mails are only delivered to valid addresses I've set up at my domain.
Invalid e-mails are bounced back to the sender, not from my system but from the sender's Internet Service Provider, or from my own ISP (Suddenlink) with a "undeliverable" message. Invalid addresses never get to the point of coming to me. They're handled at a higher level.
Mail that comes in is first cleaned by the Suddenlink spam filters, then by my own spam software in my e-mail program. Things the software thinks are spam/junk go to a spam folder.
I scan the spam/junk folder daily to watch for "false positives".
How does the sender's ISP know it is not a valid email addy? How is your system blocking invalid email addies from getting thru?
Did you have to set it up on your domain to only accept valid emails? Do you know for certain that the sender receives a bounced email alert?
At this point I'm not concerned with spam (most of my incoming email IS spam at this point but only because it addressed correctly and doesn't fail at either of my spam blockers).
I am more concerned with fat-fingered guests sending emails that don't arrive and not getting a 'bounced' or 'undeliverable' message.
 
E-mails are only delivered to valid addresses I've set up at my domain.
Invalid e-mails are bounced back to the sender, not from my system but from the sender's Internet Service Provider, or from my own ISP (Suddenlink) with a "undeliverable" message. Invalid addresses never get to the point of coming to me. They're handled at a higher level.
Mail that comes in is first cleaned by the Suddenlink spam filters, then by my own spam software in my e-mail program. Things the software thinks are spam/junk go to a spam folder.
I scan the spam/junk folder daily to watch for "false positives"..
Arkansawyer said:
E-mails are only delivered to valid addresses I've set up at my domain.
Invalid e-mails are bounced back to the sender, not from my system but from the sender's Internet Service Provider, or from my own ISP (Suddenlink) with a "undeliverable" message. Invalid addresses never get to the point of coming to me. They're handled at a higher level.
Mail that comes in is first cleaned by the Suddenlink spam filters, then by my own spam software in my e-mail program. Things the software thinks are spam/junk go to a spam folder.
I scan the spam/junk folder daily to watch for "false positives".
How does the sender's ISP know it is not a valid email addy? How is your system blocking invalid email addies from getting thru?
Did you have to set it up on your domain to only accept valid emails? Do you know for certain that the sender receives a bounced email alert?
At this point I'm not concerned with spam (most of my incoming email IS spam at this point but only because it addressed correctly and doesn't fail at either of my spam blockers).
I am more concerned with fat-fingered guests sending emails that don't arrive and not getting a 'bounced' or 'undeliverable' message.
.
Madeleine said:
How does the sender's ISP know it is not a valid email addy?
Because it bounced back to them from where they tried to send it on. An invalid address always bounces back as undeliverable, at least in my experience.
Madeleine said:
How is your system blocking invalid email addies from getting thru?
MY system isn't doing any blocking. They just can't deliver an e-mail to an address that doesn't exist, so it's returned to sender. I never even know if someone tried to send an address to an invalid address since "they" (the higher ups) wouldn't know what address to send notices to. By higher up, I mean either my own ISP, or the ones that host my domain (go_daddy_dot_com).
Madeleine said:
Did you have to set it up on your domain to only accept valid emails?
No. It's just the way it is. I know of no way you COULD accept invalid e-mails even if you wanted to. Invalid e-mails automatically are "returned to sender" just like snail mail sent to an address that doesn't exist.
Madeleine said:
Do you know for certain that the sender receives a bounced email alert?
There's no way to know that for certain since it all has nothing to do with me. It's all handled by "the Internet" at higher levels. I never even know they've sent an invalid e-mail.
I can just say that as far as I know, I've always received a bounce back anytime I have sent an e-mail to a bad address. I assume it's the same for everybody.
But sometimes those bounce back messages are from a strange address like "MAILER-DAEMON mail handler at suddenlink dot net" or something, and the original message is sent as an attachment, so some people just delete them without realizing what they are.
Madeleine said:
I am more concerned with fat-fingered guests sending emails that don't arrive and not getting a 'bounced' or 'undeliverable' message.
Nothing to be done about it. If they make a typo in entering the address, you will never get it and you won't know it was sent. They should get a bounce back telling them it was undeliverable because that e-mail address doesn't exist, but they might not realize what it is, or it may go to a junk folder and they don't know it.
Yes, it's a problem but luckily fairly rare.
 
We have 5 e-mail accounts through our web site...one of them is an [email protected] address and the other 4 are personal accounts with a [email protected]. We only get mail delivered to our in box if it is exactly addressed to one of the accounts. Most of our junk mail is filtered at the server and the junk that is missed at that end usually ends up in the junk folder on my desktop. Ocasionally I get the "Priests on Retreat" scam but our server does a good job filtering out most of the junk. It is amazing how our personal accounts get spammed....probably from DH, early on, giving his personal e-mail out when he was looking for information at a Computer World Trade Show. But again, the server takes care of that. It never makes it to my home computer desk top. I just check the server web-mail-filter every now and then to make sure that there is nothing of value that was labeled as spam by mistake.
I can access my mail (regular mail that is automatically sorted by account, as well as junk mail that would never make it to my desk top) from the server whenever we are away.
I am sure that we only get mail that is addressed exactly as it should, to a valid e-mail address. Have no idea what happens to stuff that is addressed incorrectly....like [email protected]..
Can you do a test and send an email that is spelled incorrectly to see if it bounces back to the account it was sent from? I am curious. (And, of course, there is an irate guest story lurking in the wings!)
.
OK so I tried sending twp test messages to [email protected] from a legitamate e-mail address, [email protected], and another from a yahoo account that I use for shopping. Both were immediately rejected with notification. My domain account would not send it and told me to check the address, while the yahoo account had that Mailer-Daemon message: Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address. Immediately
 
I had my domain email set up to only accept emails addressed to valid addresses. Anything else was dumped. No bounce email was sent to the originator. No undeliverable msg. It just disappeared.
I turned it off today. I have the valid emails being sent as usual to my email program and all ither emails sent to my domain are now being dumped into another email account. The spam has started already. Less than 2 hours. I am receiving emails addressed to the previous owners (10 years gone) about how I can improve my SEO.
This is why I had all of the non valid emails going into the void.
But, one irate guest raised a stink because he typed the email addy incorrectly and we didn't get his email and he didnt get a bounce.
So, my domain host does not bounce invalid emails. If it doesn't know what to do with them, they get dumped into the void.
 
I understand the question, and it is the same reason we also have our inn MISPELLED in our key words on our website as well so it comes up in searches. You know how your inn name or city name can be mispelled, so you have to take that into consideration in certain areas.
Now if the aol crowd could just stop putting the "a" for the "@" symbol the world would be a better place, but I have my own very strong opinion of aol accounts and why the people who own them get under my skin - yeah and you earthlinkers as well, get with the program, things have changed in the last 15 years! example: guest@ol.
ps did I tell you all that the email I never got with that confirmation I was waiting for was addressed to: inkeeper.
 
I have a forwarding alias of *@ourdomain.com which forwards everything to my personal mailbox [email protected]
Spam filtering is on the the mail server, but it just adds [SPAM] to the subject line. I have a message processing rule in my mail reader "Thunderbird" to "mark as read" and move to the junk folder anything with expletives in it or [SPAM] in the subject line. I also add text which identifies regularly occuring spam to this rule.
Once in a while I'll read through the junk folder then delete everything. CTL-A DEL
Apart from my personal mailbox I have two others:
stay @ ourdomain.com which is used on the website and has an autoreply which says "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah".
bookings @ ourdomain.com which doesn't have autoreply switched on and I use this address to reply to any emails coming in to stay@ so that if I'm having an email conversation with someone they don't keep getting "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah" autopreplies.
 
I have a forwarding alias of *@ourdomain.com which forwards everything to my personal mailbox [email protected]
Spam filtering is on the the mail server, but it just adds [SPAM] to the subject line. I have a message processing rule in my mail reader "Thunderbird" to "mark as read" and move to the junk folder anything with expletives in it or [SPAM] in the subject line. I also add text which identifies regularly occuring spam to this rule.
Once in a while I'll read through the junk folder then delete everything. CTL-A DEL
Apart from my personal mailbox I have two others:
stay @ ourdomain.com which is used on the website and has an autoreply which says "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah".
bookings @ ourdomain.com which doesn't have autoreply switched on and I use this address to reply to any emails coming in to stay@ so that if I'm having an email conversation with someone they don't keep getting "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah" autopreplies..
Thanks for sharing this HJ, I was going to ask this question - for those who use an auto reply, does this encourage more spam, since they find it is a live account and when the bots put in a gazillion variations, that one worked and they snag onto it?
 
I have a forwarding alias of *@ourdomain.com which forwards everything to my personal mailbox [email protected]
Spam filtering is on the the mail server, but it just adds [SPAM] to the subject line. I have a message processing rule in my mail reader "Thunderbird" to "mark as read" and move to the junk folder anything with expletives in it or [SPAM] in the subject line. I also add text which identifies regularly occuring spam to this rule.
Once in a while I'll read through the junk folder then delete everything. CTL-A DEL
Apart from my personal mailbox I have two others:
stay @ ourdomain.com which is used on the website and has an autoreply which says "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah".
bookings @ ourdomain.com which doesn't have autoreply switched on and I use this address to reply to any emails coming in to stay@ so that if I'm having an email conversation with someone they don't keep getting "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah" autopreplies..
Thanks for sharing this HJ, I was going to ask this question - for those who use an auto reply, does this encourage more spam, since they find it is a live account and when the bots put in a gazillion variations, that one worked and they snag onto it?
.
Joey Bloggs said:
Thanks for sharing this HJ, I was going to ask this question - for those who use an auto reply, does this encourage more spam, since they find it is a live account and when the bots put in a gazillion variations, that one worked and they snag onto it?
I've not done a check, but I haven't noticed that my autoreplied email box gets more junk than others, no.
 
I have a forwarding alias of *@ourdomain.com which forwards everything to my personal mailbox [email protected]
Spam filtering is on the the mail server, but it just adds [SPAM] to the subject line. I have a message processing rule in my mail reader "Thunderbird" to "mark as read" and move to the junk folder anything with expletives in it or [SPAM] in the subject line. I also add text which identifies regularly occuring spam to this rule.
Once in a while I'll read through the junk folder then delete everything. CTL-A DEL
Apart from my personal mailbox I have two others:
stay @ ourdomain.com which is used on the website and has an autoreply which says "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah".
bookings @ ourdomain.com which doesn't have autoreply switched on and I use this address to reply to any emails coming in to stay@ so that if I'm having an email conversation with someone they don't keep getting "Thank you for your email, we'll get back to you asap....blah blah blah" autopreplies..
Thanks for sharing this HJ, I was going to ask this question - for those who use an auto reply, does this encourage more spam, since they find it is a live account and when the bots put in a gazillion variations, that one worked and they snag onto it?
.
Joey Bloggs said:
Thanks for sharing this HJ, I was going to ask this question - for those who use an auto reply, does this encourage more spam, since they find it is a live account and when the bots put in a gazillion variations, that one worked and they snag onto it?
I've not done a check, but I haven't noticed that my autoreplied email box gets more junk than others, no.
.
Highlands John said:
I've not done a check, but I haven't noticed that my autoreplied email box gets more junk than others, no.
I suppose the spam potential is why most autoreply emails say something like, "Do not reply to this e-mail. It comes from an unmonitored mailbox." The autoreply emails have their "from" address set to something like do-not-reply (at) MySite.com
 
I've just gotten my second email of the day from the 'non valid' end of the spectrum. Another riff on the former innkeepers' userids.
This just goes along with still getting mail for them and phone calls from all kinds of sales people wanting to speak with the owner, by name, gone these 10 long years.
I am always tempted to take out one of these credit cards using their names and have the bills sent to them.
 
We have our email set up with Google Apps. We basically have a few accounts set up. The two most important being info@ and reservations@
We have two set up with our names, but basically we use it for administration purposes.
All mail from the reservation system goes out as reservations@ and all mail from us personally goes out from info@
Basically Google Apps screens out most of the spam for us. I go through it regularly and in two years, Google has mistakenly sent two messages to spam that did not belong there.
Email coming into info@ is immediately copied to my personal email, so I can see it and answer it. My OH answers only email when I ask him to. I usually forward a message and ask him to answer (usually because I want the French to be perfect.)
We take reservations only 180 days in advance. Google Calendar has been a great help with this. When people ask us for dates that are in the future, we can schedule a reminder, so on the day that reservations open, they can reserve. Great feature.
 
Every time I get ready to bring up my Out look, I first go to the server just as I do when I am out of town. I delete the garbage, look to see what is in the Spam file and then delete that, and then I delete the trash before I log out. Only then do I bring e-mail home. Most of the garbage comes in at night. During the day, I just hit delete a lot and check my junk box before I empty it.
I have at least 6 valid @gillumhouse addresses plus a redirect from the rail-trail domain I am Exec Director of, and a redirect from the web site our son set up for DH so he has an e-mail address. I also only get the bounce if I goof up on the address I am entering. I do not use auto reply to anything other than the RezKey thank you for your rez.....
I had not thought of adding the misspellings to my meta tags. What an idiot! People are always adding an extra i or using iam instead of um! DUH! Thanks JB.
 
Every time I get ready to bring up my Out look, I first go to the server just as I do when I am out of town. I delete the garbage, look to see what is in the Spam file and then delete that, and then I delete the trash before I log out. Only then do I bring e-mail home. Most of the garbage comes in at night. During the day, I just hit delete a lot and check my junk box before I empty it.
I have at least 6 valid @gillumhouse addresses plus a redirect from the rail-trail domain I am Exec Director of, and a redirect from the web site our son set up for DH so he has an e-mail address. I also only get the bounce if I goof up on the address I am entering. I do not use auto reply to anything other than the RezKey thank you for your rez.....
I had not thought of adding the misspellings to my meta tags. What an idiot! People are always adding an extra i or using iam instead of um! DUH! Thanks JB..
Do you ever notice email coming in to any other addresses other than the ones you created? Like getting an email addressed to an account you never set up? ie- a misspelling of the userid (rather than the domain name)?
 
Every time I get ready to bring up my Out look, I first go to the server just as I do when I am out of town. I delete the garbage, look to see what is in the Spam file and then delete that, and then I delete the trash before I log out. Only then do I bring e-mail home. Most of the garbage comes in at night. During the day, I just hit delete a lot and check my junk box before I empty it.
I have at least 6 valid @gillumhouse addresses plus a redirect from the rail-trail domain I am Exec Director of, and a redirect from the web site our son set up for DH so he has an e-mail address. I also only get the bounce if I goof up on the address I am entering. I do not use auto reply to anything other than the RezKey thank you for your rez.....
I had not thought of adding the misspellings to my meta tags. What an idiot! People are always adding an extra i or using iam instead of um! DUH! Thanks JB..
Do you ever notice email coming in to any other addresses other than the ones you created? Like getting an email addressed to an account you never set up? ie- a misspelling of the userid (rather than the domain name)?
.
No, only the addresses I have set up. I also have a frontier acct, my City e-mail, and g-mail, hotmail, and yahoo that I never access because I have forgotten the passwords for those last 3 and I think the last 2 mentioned were set up when I had citynet so I cannot get the password reset sent to me.
 
I understand the question, and it is the same reason we also have our inn MISPELLED in our key words on our website as well so it comes up in searches. You know how your inn name or city name can be mispelled, so you have to take that into consideration in certain areas.
Now if the aol crowd could just stop putting the "a" for the "@" symbol the world would be a better place, but I have my own very strong opinion of aol accounts and why the people who own them get under my skin - yeah and you earthlinkers as well, get with the program, things have changed in the last 15 years! example: guest@ol.
ps did I tell you all that the email I never got with that confirmation I was waiting for was addressed to: inkeeper..
So what's wrong with that???
tounge_smile.gif

 
Every time I get ready to bring up my Out look, I first go to the server just as I do when I am out of town. I delete the garbage, look to see what is in the Spam file and then delete that, and then I delete the trash before I log out. Only then do I bring e-mail home. Most of the garbage comes in at night. During the day, I just hit delete a lot and check my junk box before I empty it.
I have at least 6 valid @gillumhouse addresses plus a redirect from the rail-trail domain I am Exec Director of, and a redirect from the web site our son set up for DH so he has an e-mail address. I also only get the bounce if I goof up on the address I am entering. I do not use auto reply to anything other than the RezKey thank you for your rez.....
I had not thought of adding the misspellings to my meta tags. What an idiot! People are always adding an extra i or using iam instead of um! DUH! Thanks JB..
Do you ever notice email coming in to any other addresses other than the ones you created? Like getting an email addressed to an account you never set up? ie- a misspelling of the userid (rather than the domain name)?
.
No, only the addresses I have set up. I also have a frontier acct, my City e-mail, and g-mail, hotmail, and yahoo that I never access because I have forgotten the passwords for those last 3 and I think the last 2 mentioned were set up when I had citynet so I cannot get the password reset sent to me.
.
So, if someone misspelled the email addy they'd get a bounce back and you'd get nothing? Or they would get nothing back at all? Heck, I guess I can just try it myself and see what happens. OK, I get a 'transmission failed' message if I misspell the user name.
I guess my email system works differently than most. Anything misaddressed does not give the emailer an error message. It either comes thru (now that I have changed the settings) or it gets dumped as unwanted before it gets downloaded and no one's the wiser (old settings).
 
Back
Top