In today's e-mail world, spam is everywhere and Internet service providers (IPSs) feel they are forced to take steps to try and reduce the amount of spam their subscribers receive.  Frequently these anti-spam measures are unreasonable and outright foolish.

Often an ISP (AOL, Earthlink, AT&T, and so on are examples of ISPs) will "block" traffic from certain addresses or lists.  This problem affects DW's Joke of the Day but is not specific to us.  It also affects the rest of your private mail and probably means that you are losing private mail as well as JOTD if your message traffic is "blocked."  Anyone trying to write to you during the same time frame will probably have received the same errors for the same reason. The JOTD list is but one of the many people who may have tried to write to you while your mail system was "blocked" (malfunctioning) so that legitimate messages could not be received.

Do not let technical people convince you this is normal or that they have "no choice" but to block messages you want to receive.  It is never normal for a mail system to claim that a valid, working account does not exist, just as it would not be normal for the post office to return some of your mail with "addressee unknown" when the address was written correctly. It is true that some mail systems are less reliable than others, and your technical people may be doing the best they can with the tools they have. But, ultimately, the level of service that you are receiving is the result of a business decision, and not something due to a universal technical limitation that one can only accept. Reliable mail systems do exist, and it is ultimately up to you to decide whether this level of service is acceptable or not.

Moreover, you have a right to expect that you will receive legitimate mail traffic that you want to receive (you are the final arbiter of what traffic is legitimate).

The point is please remember to "allow" DW's Joke of the Day messages if you're about to "block" your mail account. If your ISP is blocking your JOTD messages, you must insist that they unblock (or "white list" all messages from "synchronal.net."