I was just in making some changes to my Dreamhost email accounts and saw this message discreetly at the bottom of one of the windows:

"You should always have a valid postmaster@domain.com address or some domains may not accept email from you."

I assume this applies to ALL domains, not just those hosted at DH. Does anyone have more info on this topic? Do you need an ACTUAL email account for "postmaster" at each domain, or is an address alias sufficient.

And what really ARE the pros and cons of setting up such an email account/address...

And why does NOT having one result in you being blacklisted by other domains?

Any insights on this perplexing issue would be appreciated. Thanks!

An alias is sufficient.

Some anti-spam (blacklist) sites use the postmaster@... email to deal with reports of spam coming from your domain. AOL also does this (sometimes).

If mail to postmaster@... doesn't get delivered (bounces), then the domain might be automatically considered a spam source that is trying to be unaccountable.

Even if you don't send spam (or things people might consider spam) from your e-mail accounts at your domain, third parties might slap your domain as the FROM address on their e-mail. Having postmaster@... and abuse@... will help you to deal with these misunderstandings.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2006 11:15AM by TheTominator.

Thanks for the 'Splainer, Tominator.

So does setting up such an account open you up to tons of garbage from bounced virus emails that were spoofed using your domain? That's one of the reasons I chose NOT to have such an address... the flood of crap that it tends to attract.

Any way around this? Or do most people simply redirect these to some sort of auto delete function?

The RFC's that describe how the Internet mail is supposed to work require a postmaster account or address alias for all domains, no exceptions. You can either set one up or an alias and and be in compliance, or deal with the consequences later. As already mentioned, one is that some sites will blacklist your domain and not accept or deliver email from it. Most sites have the postmaster email heavily spam-filtered, so the legitimate emails can be sppotted more easily. The rest can be dumped as spam after however short a time period you want. Some domain hosting services provide postmaster alias servicing and will do the filtering and responding to messages for you for an additional fee or as part of the monthly hosting fee.

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Just use a catch-all.
Who are you hosted with? I'll find you the instructions.
Yes, eventually that will result in more spam, but am I the only one that finds it relatively easy to just frikkin' delete it?

I guess I still don't understand. Is this for domain owners only or a way to fill in the field for e-mail addresses requested by sites you just want to look at?

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Da Good Life



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2006 12:04PM by spearmint.

once and a while???

I've never received anything but spam at postmaster and abuse. It's the same spam that shows up at info, sales, service, and so on.

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That's a lot of pesto.

Quote
spearmint
I guess I still don't understand. Is this for domain owners only or a way to fill in the field for e-mail addresses requested by sites you just want to look at?

Spearmint, the way I understand it... If you have a domain name hosted, and it DOES NOT have a "postmaster@yourdomain.com" email account/address set up (such that email can be recieved and not bounced back), OTHER domains may blacklist (or block) ANY email coming from your domain.

In other words, your mail to others (from your domain) will be BOUNCED back to you, because it is suspected you are operating from an illegitimate domain. This, even though you may never have actually broken any "rules" with respect to spamming, etc.

So, in short, it concerns NOT having your domains blacklisted by others becasue they are somehow not compliant (by having a postmaster account). Others will correct me if I'm wrong.