[Tfug] Best Practices re: EMail services

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

[I don't administer any systems other than my own.
And, since they *are* my own, I am keenly in touch
with how they are (mis)behaving so things tend not
to get out of hand *before* I "fix" them...]

My other half regularly receives email notifications
for activities she participates in with groups of
others.  It's my understanding that these messages
arrive with all the recipients listed in the To:
header instead of Bcc:, etc. (<frown> these folks
seem oblivious to privacy/security issues but I
have no desire to take up that cause!).

*Regularly* (!), recipients complain of not receiving
these periodic emails.  Or, the *sender* telephones
to claim that the (copy) of the email intended for
them is bouncing ("I just need to verify your email
address because it's not going through...")  The
insinuation is that there is "something wrong" with
the *recipients'* accounts/providers (I guess the
sender has never heard of Occam's Razor?  :> )

These folks are *all* highly non-technical.  "Consumers".
So, getting any real information from them is unreliable,
at *best*!

I'm *guessing* that what is happening is the *sender's*
provider doesn't queue outgoing messages for repeated
delivery attempts more than some brief/nominal time.
I.e., attempt delivery immediately and, if no go, bounce
the message (or, just enqueue it for a *short* period of
time).

[By contrast, I leave things in my output queue for a
long time since I know it will *eventually* be delivered
and don't care about the immediacy of that event!]

Is this the new norm for MTA's?  Alternatively, is there
some other mechanism that might explain this sort of behavior?

What can I do to prove/disprove this theory given the
(unreliable, unsophisticated) nature of the users involved?

Finally, any remedies I can suggest to these folks (short
of telling the sender to find a different provider??  :> )?

Thanks!
--don