What happens to my emails?

[chrisrob]

Recently I will go for a few days with quite a light inbox only to find a few days later I receive a deluge of emails that are a few days old.
Where have they been in the interim?
I'm using Gmail, Chrome browser and Windows 7 starter on a netbook.

[ChuckFickens]

You are going to have to check the mail headers if you want to know the answer to this.

The second post in the page below shows how to view the headers on gmail

http://www.ummah.com/...-Gmail-and-Hotmail%29

Then you need to follow the received by sections, starting from the earliest working down to the latest and try and spot at which point there is a big gap in time, and that is where your mail is getting delayed.

If you are having trouble understanding the header then you can also copy and paste the mail header into this page, click submit and it will tell you all the servers the mail passed through and what the delay time is.

http://mailparse.co.uk/

[chrisrob]

Thanks Chuck.
But it does seem as if the immediacy of email is a myth. And I imagine my emails floating around lost in the ether or sitting in some ISP's data bank in case someone wants to hack into it!

[ChuckFickens]

"But it does seem as if the immediacy of email is a myth"

It's not even a myth....

People seem to have this idea that email is a guaranteed method of communication.... It is not at all. it never has been and never will be. if something is important it should not be sent by email as there is never any guarantee that it will be delivered at all, let alone quickly.