We all receive emails from automated services such as payment reminders, news alerts or other opt-in communications. The emails are computer-generated and the sender typically includes a notice asking the recipient not to reply to the message, since the sending account is not being monitored. Apparently, some companies go one step further and put an invalid return address in the message envelope.

No question, this is a bad practice. All emails, auto-generated or not, should have a valid return address, not simply as a matter of customer courtesy, but also for other reasons. As it turns out, many of these messages cannot be delivered to the intended recipient. People’s email addresses change, they forget to update their email notification preferences, and of course many anti-spam filters mislabel these messages as spam and block the delivery.

And here is where it gets interesting.
Some of the geniuses in charge of these mail servers apparently use as the “fake” return address: some_address-at-donotreply-dot-com. DoNotReply.com of course is a valid internet domain, registered thankfully to somebody with a sense of humor. Chet Faliszek maintains a blog that exposes the worst offenders.

What really got my attention is who’s made the list:

• The Department of Homeland Security
• Merrill Lynch
• MessageLabs
• Capital One
• Verizon Wireless
• Microsoft

Besides the embarrassment, there is also great potential for legal liability for these companies, as some messages contained privileged information.

If you are in charge of messaging operations at your company, I would suggest reviewing the procedures for configuring auto-mailers. Here is what I recommend:

• Provide a valid return address to accept undeliverable messages.
• Implement a process that checks this bounce mailbox and purges undeliverable email addresses from the auto-mailer after a certain count.
• Include a real email address for customer support in the do-not-reply disclaimer in the body of the message to allow recipients to respond.
• Include an unsubscribe link in the message.

Technorati Tags: donotreply.com, email risk, mass-mailers

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