As a result of an event that resulted in our email messages being temporarily blocked by an outside spam-watching organization called Spamhaus, effective in May 2023 the system now treats returned emails as incorrect and deletes them from the member's account. 

This includes bounce-backs due to invalid address as well as those where the mailbox was full or blocked, because if we keep sending mail to those mailboxes we risking being blocked by Spamhaus (or other similar organization) again. (We do ignore "out of office" replies because those aren't considered bounce-backs, just responses to the initial email.)

A note is written to the member's Audit Tracker (AT) record, using Memo Type EI (Email Invalid), showing the previous address that was cleared, like this:
We will also include the bounce back reason that was received from the email provider as further explanation. Any questions regarding the bounce back reason should be directed to the email provider. 

A record is also written to the CUFMAINT file maintenance log using the ID of the operator who ran the cleanup process, or the generic system ID of 99.

After review, if you see the invalid email was a simple matter of a typographical error, you can re-enter the address on the member's account. Otherwise, perform due diligence to obtain an accurate email address from the member. 

In the past the system flagged all bounce-backs, for any reason, the same way, by simply checking the "wrong email address" flag. This proved to cause more problems than it solved, however, as many CUs were simply resetting that flag for all their addresses, regardless of whether it was really valid or not. In addition to adjusting the bounce-back process as described, we also disabled the ability for CUs to automatically uncheck that wrong email address flag in a batch.  

Please note the related items below explaining why it is every credit union's responsibility to adhere to standards and good email hygiene practices, to prevent our system being tagged by external parties and preventing emails from being delivered for all CUs across the network.