Repeat of incoming emails.

[Snowy Owl]

Every so often, the same email will come in several times. Sometimes they will all turn up together, other times they will appear at intervals. It`s not all mail, it`s not all the time, but I was wondering what`s going on.

[Buenchico]

When someone sends you e-mail, your e-mail provider's server sends an acknowledgement back to the sender's server to confirm receipt. If no 'receipt' is received by the sending server, the mail is sent again.

Sometimes there are problems with internet connections. (These are on the 'backbone' of the internet and nothing to do with your PC or your ISP). The mail gets through OK but the receipt doesn't get back to the sending server. The sending server then sends the mail again and you get a second copy. If the receipt for that copy doesn't get through, you receive a third copy and so on.

After a certain number of tries, if the sending server still hasn't got a receipt it will stop re-sending the mail and send a 'bounced mail' message to the person who sent the e-mail. If this happens you will get the maximum number of copies of the mail (which can be anything from 3 to several thousand, depending upon the settings of the sending server) but the person who sent the mail will still receice a message saying that you've not received it!

This happens to everyone from time to time. (I once received 2000 copies of the same mail!). There's usually nothing you can do about it because, as I've stated, it's normally due to problems on the internet's 'backbone. If, however, you start to get multiple copies of all your mail, you should contact your ISP to advise them that their server is not sending 'receipts'.

Chris