"I never received your e-mail"

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#21

I think you are perhaps confusing “return receipt” with “autoreply”. You can’t get a “return receipt” from someone else unless you have it turned on. “Return receipt” is when you check the little box that says “Notify me when this message is delivered.” and gives you the nifty little message “Such-and-such message has been opened by the recepient. The message has been displayed on the recipient’s computer but we do not guarante it has been read or understood.”

“Autoreply” is the annoying feature that will send everyone who emails you a message that says “This is a valid email address. Spam me.” (Well, that’s not usually what the message really says.)

#22

Moderator’s note:

ftg, Monty, both of you knock it off.

ftg, that comment was unnecessarily rude and hostile, given that it was completely unprovoked. Your direct response to Monty, quoting him, negates the “anybody who” dodge. It’s still an insult. Don’t do it again.

Monty, you certainly didn’t deserve the gratuitous slap ftg dealt your way. That said, you stepped out of line in turn when you flamed back at him. A return flame is still a flame, though I understand why such a cheap shot made you angry, truly do.

Keep the discussion centered on ideas, not personalities.

TVeblen,
IMHO mod

#23

Also, Kat forgot to mention that usually when someone sends you an email with return receipt requested, your email program will ASK YOU if you want it to notify the sender or not. So unless you get spam where the SENDER has rr turned on, AND you click yes when it asks if you want to send a receipt, a spammer cannot use rr to check if email addys are live or not.

#24

Hey, no problem, Veb. I agree with you. IMHO, the first part of my comment was justified, albeit being “junior modding.” However, the second part certainly wasn’t kashrut for the SDMB.

At any rate, ftg’s comment showed me that I’ll probably never listen to any advice he might have.

#25

:rolleyes:

I frequently have problems with my school email. I received an email from a professor once nine days after she sent it. Recently, my school mail account would not work with Outlook Express no matter what I did. My password wasn’t being accepted, and I let it go for about two weeks before getting around to getting it fixed. During the time that it was down, I was checking my mail through www.campusi.com - I noticed I wasn’t getting the usual bulletins I had been getting since I started school here. I think it was showing that I’d received something like six emails during the time that I was checking it through campusi. When I got things working with Outlook Express again last week, I had over 20 messages waiting for me, some dated over three weeks old.

So. . . we might not ALL be lying when we say: “I didn’t get your email.” Or “Didn’t you get my email?” Although I have to say, if I want to make sure homework gets turned in, I go turn it in myself.

#26

My company’s default filters like to route messages directly to my deleted files folder. Especially if they come from the CFO.

I even tried turning off filters-- and then recreating a bunch of rules. Didn’t matter much, because as soon as I turned on filtering (even with no rules evident), messages from a number of senders never make it to my inbox. No one knows why…

#27

Of course, but most of the time, it is a lie. It may also be true that dogs did in fact eat homework, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s usually a cop-out.

Other popular ones:
I ran out of ink in my printer.
My computer crashed.
I snail-mailed the paper to you; didn’t you get it?
Notepad (or Word, or whatever program) wouldn’t boot up.
I left it in my mom’s car, and I only live with her on weekends.
I ran out of paper.
The disk accidentally got magnetized.
I don’t have a printer.

Obviously, all of these things * could * be true. Most likely, they aren’t. But they sure are entertaining.

As you said, the best way is to PERSONALLY hand the paper in to the teacher. In fact, I tell each student that to do otherwise is at their own risk. 95% come to me and actually say aloud, “I am personally handing in my paper, in front of all these people.” It’s kind of a running joke.

#28

Mangetout - I gotcha…I was speaking for myself personally. The three or four ISPs (small town, hehe) around here don’t, so most of the ppl I contact locally (college students included) have no good excuse :stuck_out_tongue:

#29

This is great! :slight_smile:

I once worked for a company (PeopleSoft) that routed external email through a server that was identified as PSEXTERNAL. I had to start sending business email from a public account because so many corporate filters identified it as spam and automatically blocked it (pSEXternal)

#30

I delete so much spam that I sometimes delete a few valid e-mails. (Actually, I “bounce” them so that the sender gets an “undeliverable” message.) My admittedly less-than-perfect method:

  1. If it comes from a company that I’ve bought software from, it might be an update, so I don’t delete it.
  2. If it comes from another company that I do business with, there’s not much that I expect from an e-mail other than some sort of solicitation, so I dump it.
  3. (very good tip, at least for me) If it’s from a friend or family, they know to put a special word in the subject (e.g., some variation of the word, “shade”), so it sticks out.
  4. Pretty much everything else just gets deleted. I’ll never know the benefits of on-line casinos, ripping DVD’s, or what Vicky thinks is incredibly funny that I should look at.

Result: My general perception that e-mail is a somewhat unreliable communications medium, and I don’t really mind it all that much. On occasions where I have to send something to someone, I just put it on my personal webpage under password protection and I send them an e-mail asking them to reply with my special word in the e-mail’s subject.

Question: What motivates the spammers to send messages with subjects like, “ceosb ok bthomfz dhewe”? Do they think people will actually read the messages? Or are they the spammers’ equivalent of a Hail Mary Pass?

#31

The random subject line makes the email less likely to get caught by keyword spam filters.

#32

:smack: Duh. I guess that didn’t occur to me because, being a little contrary, I use my spam filters as anti-spam filters – mail with good/known addresses or those with “shade” (not the real word) variations get moved to my “Probably_Good” e-mail folder, newsgroup subscriptions have their own folders, and everything else just stays put in my inbox awaiting mass execution…