Nancy,
I see a lot of posts about bouncing - AOL bounce or Yahoo bounce. I
just want to know what is a bounce?
Most often a "bounce" is when an email service refuses to accept an incoming message. The receiving service gives a three-digit code and (optional) text explanation for why the message is not accepted. In some cases the sending service (groups.io, in the case of messages here) can't make a connection to the intended receiving service, and that too is considered a bounce.
That much is pretty simple. Unfortunately, automatic handling of bounces, as both Y!Groups and Groups.io attempt to do, turns out to be more complicated than anyone would want it to be, because the details of why the bounce happened and whether it is likely to be a permanent situation or a transient one vary so much.
i have 5 members with a blue bounce.
That means that Groups.io has determined that the delivery failure is unlikely to resolve by just retrying, so Groups.io stoped attempting to deliver group messages to that address and instead sends occasional notices (probes) asking for the member to confirm receipt of the notice.
If there's no response from the member after a number of these notices have been sent then Groups.io gives up sending even the notices and changes their status to "bounced" - a B in a red badge.
In my searching I¡¯ve discovered a probe and sent one to each but I
don¡¯t really know how to reply if they answer with a question.
Tell them to look for a notice (the probe you sent, or one of the automatic ones) in their Inbox, Spam folder, Trash, or wherever an incoming email message may have been placed by their email service. If they find it they should follow its instructions. Once Groups.io receives their response to a probe their account will go back to normal status and the sending of group messages will resume.
Shal
Shal Farley