On Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:12:55 +0100 Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:
> Stefan Monnier <[email protected]> wrote: > > Andy Smith [2026-04-28 19:40:40] wrote: > > > A Google employee on the "mailop" mailing list once said that > > > there is absolutely no intentional way for gmail to silently > > > discard an email, unless a user with a Workspaces account has > > > added filtering rules to do that. > > > > > > On the other hand, as someone whose business sends out invoices by > > > email, I have had recipients at gmail.com swear that they only > > > paid late because "we never received the email", despite me > > > showing Exim logs where gmail accepted it. > > > > > > So I honestly do not know who to believe on that particular > > > point. > > > > I think the answer lies in the definition of "discard" and at which > > stage this can happen. Like all MTAs, Gmail routinely silently > > drops email on the floor on the basis that it's presumed to be > > "spam". So Google's employee must have been referring to something > > else, like "discarding after spam filtering" or something like that. > > > Is that really true? My domains and mail are hosted on a small[ish] > ISP in the UK. As far as I'm aware absoltely **all** E-Mail that > arrives there and is addressed to me will get sent to me, unless **I** > decide to drop some by setting some filtering criteria. > Maybe, maybe not, it's up to the email administrator. My server rejects some email at the SMTP transaction level for a variety of reasons, but then the sender (if a real email sender) will be notified the transaction failed, and why. I don't reject there on message content, but the means to do so certainly exists. -- Joe
