Guide · Trust and delivery
postmaster@ and abuse@: the addresses every mail domain needs
Two addresses exist so that strangers can reach a domain when something goes wrong with its mail. This guide says who writes to them, what they should expect, and how the service keeps them working.
Who writes to them
An administrator at another provider who sees mail failing from your domain writes to postmaster@. Someone who receives abusive or fraudulent mail that appears to come from you writes to abuse@. These people do not know any other address at the domain, which is the point of fixed names.
What the standard says
RFC 2142 defines mailbox names for common services, roles and functions. It lists ABUSE among the mailbox names for network operations and POSTMASTER among those for specific services, and it says that if a service is offered, the associated mailbox names must be supported. For an SMTP host, POSTMASTER is the one every domain that takes mail should answer.
How Alcitron Mail handles them
- Both mailboxes are created with every domain, and for older domains by a backfill that leaves an address alone if a mailbox, alias or forward already answers for it.
- They are created with a random secret nobody sees, so no sign-in works until the domain’s owner or an administrator sets a password in the client area. Mail is delivered either way.
- They are never deleted while the domain exists, and they are not counted against the plan.
Keeping them useful
- Set a password and sign in once, to confirm that mail arrives.
- Forward them to someone who reads mail each day, with an alias if the mailbox itself is not read.
- Treat a message to either as urgent. A report to abuse@ that goes unanswered is read by the reporter as indifference, and the next step they take is to block the domain.
- Do not filter them so hard that the messages they exist to receive are discarded.
Questions
Are postmaster and abuse required?
RFC 2142 says that if a service is offered, the associated mailbox names must be supported; POSTMASTER is the one every domain that takes mail should answer.
Do they cost a mailbox from the plan?
No. They are not counted against the plan and are never held by it.
Why can nobody sign in to them at first?
They are created with a random secret nobody sees. A password is set by the domain’s owner or an administrator in the client area.
Sources
The documents this guide’s statements rest on. Each link opens in a new page.