Hello Residents of Second Life!  

Over the last few days, Residents using certain email providers may have noticed that they are not receiving all email notifications for events such as Marketplace purchases and Offline Messages.  

Email has come a long way since it was first introduced to the world in the 1960s. There are many factors that affect the deliver-ability of a message, and algorithms which affect it are constantly being updated.  Sometimes things go awry despite best intentions - such as certain phrases being flagged as indicative of spam, or the volume of messages sent in a certain time frame.

Second Life is a complex beast and not all our email sending practices are as good as they could be. We are re-examining these practices and we’re going to do better to make sure our Residents are able to get the information they need.

There are some things you, as the recipient, can also do to better ensure deliver-ability, such as having email filters, white-listing certain contacts, checking your spam folder and marking legitimate messages “Not Spam,” and even contacting your email providers about certain emails.

If you are experiencing issues receiving emails from us, you may also want to consider updating your email temporarily to a different provider (for example if @yahoo emails are failing, try a @gmail account), verifying your email address with us (offline IMs, friendship offers, auctions, etc all require a verified address), and white-listing (add sender to contacts) Second Life messages to ensure you receive them in the future. It’s always best to use an email account that is only accessible by you.  

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused and will provide updates once available.