Causes of A Bounce Message
There are many reasons why an e-mail may bounce. One reason is if the recipient address is misspelled, or simply does not exist on the receiving system. This is a user unknown condition. Other reasons include resource exhaustion — such as a full disk — or the rejection of the message due to spam filters. In addition, there are MUAs that allow users to bounce a message on demand.
Bounce messages in SMTP are sent with the envelope sender address <>, known as the null sender address. They are frequently sent with a From: header address of MAILER-DAEMON at the recipient site.
Typically, a bounce message will contain several pieces of information to help the original sender in understanding the reason his message was not delivered:
- The date and time the message was bounced,
- The identity of the mail server that bounced it,
- The reason that it was bounced (e.g. user unknown or mailbox full),
- The headers of the bounced message, and
- Some or all of the content of the bounced message.
RFC 3463 describes the codes used to indicate the bounce reason. Common codes are 5.1.1 (Unknown user), 5.2.2 (Mailbox full) and 5.7.1 (Rejected by security policy/mail filter).
Read more about this topic: Non Delivery Report
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