I'll agree that there are plenty of companies to whom this does not apply. Facebook is a great example. But I have seen SO MANY small retail companies who sen

I'll agree that there are plenty of companies to whom this does not apply. Facebook is a great example. But I have seen SO MANY small retail companies who send out email to engage customers, and the VERY FIRST thing they say to their customers is, "I don't care what you have to say." It's just nuts. > I get every single bounce and delete them all by hand. Don't do this! Maybe you already know about this, but for the benefit of everyone else following, Email Lesson: 1) Email bounces are not sent to the "From" address. It goes to the "Envelope From". You won't see Envelop From unless you dig through email headers. It's really just part of the SMTP conversation before your mail server starts sending the actual message (header and body). Your desktop email program probably makes these two addresses the same, but your mailing list software needn't. 2) When Joe User replies to an email on purpose, his email client WILL use the From address (or Reply-to, but never mind that). 3) There is a clever idea called VERP (Variable Envelope Return Path) that exploits this, where you make the Envelope From different for every email you send to a list. If you send me an email and your mailing list software made the Envelope From, "newsletter+haroldp=internal.org@joelonsoftware.com" and it bounced, your MTA could route that bounced message to the "newsletter@joelonsoftware.com" account, and use the encoded email address in there to figure out that it was my address that bounced. The To address on the message should point to a human's mailbox. Only real replies (ok, and the stupid out of office messages) will land there. Poorly coded auto-responders are another rant, but I don't hold out any hope of getting everyone to read man vacation. VERP: http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt