Email limbo
Email messages don't just disappear. When an error occurs that causes a message to be lost there is usually an error reported to the administrator of the system where the message got stuck. Sometimes a message is sent to an administrator and at other times messages are held in a queue waiting for someone to correct whatever the problem is.

Unfortunately, email administrators, and especially ISPs (Internet Service Providers), are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of "postmaster" or "administrator" email created by different kinds of errors and by user queries and complaints. The sad truth is that most lost email isn't really lost. It's deleted by administrators who just can't keep up with it.

A new hope
If an email message is "lost" there may still be hope. At one major company, email users complained that they were receiving all their messages almost exactly 24 hours after the messages had been sent. At the time, email communication was expected to take only about five minutes. A baffled customer called my company, the email provider, Global System Services. GSS found that the problem was caused by an overloaded email gateway that would become so backlogged during business hours (when there was a lot of email traffic) that it couldn't catch up until just before the next business day began.

After three days of frustration, another GSS client called for help. The IT department at GSS explained that they could observe email messages coming into their system on the same machine where they were supposed to be delivered, but the email seemed to disappear.

Eventually, GSS found that the email was being forwarded because of a configuration error. It was getting transferred from the machine where it should have been delivered to another machine where it got stuck. From that machine, the messages couldn't be returned to the sender or be delivered. The problem was fixed the same day, and all the email was delivered. Meanwhile, the machine where the email had been stuck for as long as three days was dubbed the "black hole."

Conclusion
Many things can go wrong but there is always a solution. With properly designed, configured, and operated email systems, lost email is virtually impossible. Often email messages that are missing in action and presumed lost are actually awaiting rescue on some distant machine. Unfortunately, email messages that have gone astray are more likely to be summarily deleted than to be saved.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com.