Some emails aren't being received

I talked to a friend of mine last night who wondered why I haven't been answering his emails. I told him I haven't received any from him for over a week, even though he's been sending me several a day. He said that some of his other friends haven't been getting them either, and some have. So his wife tried to send me one from her PC in on the same ISP, and I didn't get hers either. She talked to the rep with her provider and he told her he could see them going out, but I'm not receiving them, and they're not bouncing back to them either.
My friend is an older guy, 62 I believe, and just got his first PC a couple months ago, so I'm thinking he did something to cause this because of his inexperience, but I don't know what would do it.
Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks

 

I'm assuming that you can send to them? Can they reply to your sent message?

 

As "jconstan" said, sending them an email and seeing if they can reply is the best place to start. If the senders are not receiving bounce messages notifying them that their mail has not been delivered, the messages may be being swallowed up by an anti-spam system at your ISP. Or, if two people from the same ISP cannot send email to you (and neither has mistyped your address), another possibility is that their sending mail server has been black listed. Unfortunately, you'd need to know the IP address of the sending mail server in order to determine if it's black listed. This could be almost impossible for you to determine because the MX record of the sender's domain will only show their receiving mail server--not necessarily the same as their sending mail server. And since you aren't receiving messages from them, you can't exactly check the details of a mail header. Your friend(s) may be able to check the configuration of their mail program (Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) and look up the IP address of their SMTP server using NSLOOKUP (at the command line). That server may be the sending mail server seen on the recipient's end (unless the ISP has another mail relay in between). Once known, the IP address could then be checked against common black lists...

http://www.robtex.com/rbl/
http://www.trustedsource.org/
http://www.spamhaus.org/lookup.lasso

If it is black listed, your friends will be at the mercy of their ISP in getting it fixed.

 

Yeah, they receive mine, but when they reply I don't get it. I also don't get anything that the forward. She just called me and said she was just on the phone with HP wo had her change some settings, but I'm still not receiving them. They're not going into my junk mail folder either.

 

RBLs (Real Time Blacklists) can be checked by connection control modules of anti-spam systems. This means that an anti-spam system won't necessarily quarantine emails from such a sender--they'll simply drop the TCP connection from the sending mail server before any transaction takes place. However, when this occurs, the sender typically receives a bounce notification from their own sending mail server indicating that the message could not be delivered. If the sending mail server is not configured to provided "delayed delivery" notifications, the failure notification may take a few days to arrive (as the sending mail server may continue to try delivering the message).

Another test (which would be outside of the realm of a computer "beginner") would be to sniff the traffic coming out of the sending computer to see if the SMTP traffic shows as leaving. But you'd only check that if they can't send email to anyone and aren't receiving error messages. If the sender's emails are making it to other people (just not you), then there's most likely nothing wrong with the configuration of their mail program.

 

Well, it's actually not just me, he says that most of the people aren't getting them. But he said he wrote to a guy about something he had for sale and he got it. I wonder if it's something with his address book?

 

Thanks for the help. They reinstalled their email program or something, and now it's working. Thanks a lot for the help guys, it's much appreciated.

 

Well, I guess we were a little quick on this. It still doesn't work. I'm not sure how they got one email through to me, but no others have worked. So we're back to square one. Any ideas? Remember, they're not very computer savvy, so try to keep the language simple. Thanks everyone.

 

if you do think youre being blacklisted, check out www.mxtoolbox.com. it will check your ip against 150some black lists.

 

Are they using a mail client like outlook OR IE with web access to email?

One thing that is interesting is that you said their ISP verified that their email was leaving their server. If that is truly the case, then that leaves your ISP as the one blocking the email.

 

They've been using outllok. I just received an email from them sent directly from they're box and no problem, I think it's their outlook. I just wrote back and told them to switch to Firefox and Thunderbird.
jconstan, if my isp was blocking them though, wouldn't it bounce?

 

Perhaps......but I'm going with the fact that you indicated that their ISP said he saw the email leave their email server. Sending a bounce email is totally under the control of the receiving email server. If it doesn't want to send one, based on some decision, then it won't.

 

Some "delivery status notification" messages will come from your own mail server--such as MX resolution failures and delayed deliveries. But, as you pointed out, any DSN will be based upon server configuration--whether sender's side or recipient's side.

 

I would wonder though why other people aren't receiving from him either? Some aren't, and some are. I could believe that it's my isp not accepting him for some reason, but why would a whole group of isp's stop accepting him at the same time?
I really feel that HE did something since he had never used a pc before about 2 months ago when he got his first one. His wife is a more experienced user, but not to savvy either. I just can't understand what he would have done to cause it.

 

You can eliminate their machine pretty much by asking them to send an email using a browser and their WEB email through their service provider. If they still have problems reaching you, then its your ISP. No, it could be a black list issue as someone has suggested but usually you'll get a bounce.

Have they checked their junk folder?

 

They just sent me an email doing just that, they used their browser and their provider. I think it's something wrong with their outlook. Perhaps a virus or something?

 

Well....that's good. Is it Outlook Express or Outlook? Have they checked their Outbox folder? Now I'm questioning if the emails ever left their machine with Outlook.

 

FYI: The validity of the test is going to depend upon the size of the ISP and if they have multiple sending mail servers. My ISP sends from a different IP address when sending via SMTP through Thunderbird vs. their web interface. Sending an email through the web interface may not completely rule out a black list problem.