Web Development Insight

Certain email addresses are reserved for a specific use. Their primary function is to make it easy for the administrators of various servers when they need to contact the most responsible person for a particular service.
The following names are reserved for this use:

* postmaster@mydomain.com
* abuse@mydomain.com

postmaster

The most responsible person for these services are most likely a system administrator or webmaster. The postmaster is responsible for any and all email that is sent through a system connected via the Internet. The most common reason that the postmaster will be contacted is when there is either a misconfiguration of the mail-server, or it is generating unsolicited bulk email (usually through a virus or Trojan).

Several RFC (request for comment) require a postmaster@mydomain.com account:

• RFC822 6.3
• RFC1123 5.2.7
• RFC2821 4.5.1

abuse

Though not required by any RFC, it is common to have an abuse@mydomain.com so administrators, or anyone for that matter, may contact you if your email is being abused.

I have both of mine forwarded to a catchall email account.

One drawback of having “known” email addresses is spammers know the common ones (like postmaster, abuse, info, test, …) and will try and exploit them.

Doug

Just today I decided to check my email forms for my websites: fill out a comment, name, and return email address and click on submit then see if I get an email within a minute or so. One of the emails never arrived. Hmmm. I know I’ve tested them before. Into webmail I went to see if the missing email was stuck. Lo and behold, the email account did not exist!!

In visiting the host I found out the email address was gone. After reestablishing it everything worked fine. The email form check will go on my list of weekly sanity checks for my websites!

Doug