Combat bounced email with these troubleshooting tips

Although your company higher-ups can read your email and block it, most likely, you've run into a different problem. While we strongly caution against sending personal email from your work account, the bottom line is that your email system isn't working as it should. We'll go through the most common culprits behind returned, or bounced, email.

• Incorrect email address. You may think you've ruled this one out, but double-check your outgoing mail address to ensure you have it right. A simple ".com" instead of ".net" creates a delivery problem that isn't immediately obvious.
• Text that triggers a spam filter. Some ISPs aggressively scan for words or phrases that commonly appear in spam. If found, email can be trapped in a filter or, less often, returned as undeliverable. Check your email for content and try to resend it.
• Virus or worm infection. Your computer may be infected, which in turn, causes other systems to block your email. Be sure to scan your PC for such a problem.
• Blacklisted email address. If someone used your ISP to spam others, your service could be on a blacklist. If your ISP is blacklisted, other ISPs automatically refuse email originating from your service. Have your recipients check with their companies (e.g., Tengster.com) to see whether this is the case.
• Blocked email address. Most ISPs allow users to block individuals, or even whole domains, to prevent spam or harassment. So, if your recipient doesn't want to hear from you and adds you to a blocked-senders list, your email is automatically refused. Unless he personally removes the block, your email bounces back.

DNS configuration problems. If your ISP doesn't have the correct DNS (domain name server) configuration, many services won't accept your email. If you suspect this is the problem, forward the bounced messages to your email administrator and have him investigate further.

Take action
To truly get to the heart of the problem, you need to investigate the specific error message you're receiving in the returned mail or forward it to your administrator. (Since our reader's email is personal and not work-related, there's only so much he can do as far as asking his IT guy to step in.)