In electronic mail terms the notion of a false negative is the result of an email that is rejected falsely but in a way that this rejection is unknown to the intended recipient leading to a feeling of being falsely reassured. Whilst this may be acceptable in many scenarios there are times when a genuine sender may appear inadvertently on a black list (for example, the problem may have been resolved).

For example, the adoption of a RBL (Real Time Blacklist) filter can check an email sender against a dynamic list of known senders that should be avoided including spammers. However, a filter will typically reject the incoming mail at the border instead of quarantining it and reporting such to the administrator.

In the scenario where a genuine email sender appears on an RBL and is unaware at the point of sending then the email may be automatically rejected (or even worse filtered) at the border of the recipients email service. The sender may be a valued trading partner and in this scenario a potentially valuable business transaction may be lost – only to be discovered later on by the recipient when the sender follows up their correspondence.

This definition has been bought to you by: Jason Slater Weblog.

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