On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:58:25 -0600 "Gerald V. Livingston II" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Martin Strand wrote: >> We're an email service provider hosting ~3000 domains. Customers can >> delegate their domains to our nameservers and administer email >> accounts with a web interface. >> >> I figured it would be a good idea to reserve the postmaster@ and >> abuse@ addresses for hosted domains and forward them to our own >> postmaster account. >> >> Now one of these customers wants to create a [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> account and use it for his personal email... I just want to ask what >> you guys think about this policy, am I just being silly when >> reserving these addresses in the customer's own domain? Should I drop >> that restriction and leave their domains alone? >> >> Thanks, Martin > >You need to tell the user to read RFC 2821 and get over it. "postmaster" >is not for personal mail. > >Any system that includes an SMTP server supporting mail relaying or > delivery MUST support the reserved mailbox "postmaster" as a case- > insensitive local name. This postmaster address is not strictly > necessary if the server always returns 554 on connection opening (as > described in section 3.1). The requirement to accept mail for > postmaster implies that RCPT commands which specify a mailbox for > postmaster at any of the domains for which the SMTP server provides > mail service, as well as the special case of "RCPT TO:<Postmaster>" > (with no domain specification), MUST be supported. > >As noted above, if the domain doesn't reserve the postmaster address >then it must return a 554 for every incoming connection and *NOT* accept >*ANY* mail for *ANY* address on the domain (eg. a smtp server intended >for use only on a private WAN could accept mail for its member cidr >ranges but must 554 all mail from outside unless postmaster is reserved >and working for its intended purpose). >
Well yes, but whose domain is it? The domain owner is responsible for monitoring these addresses. If the domain owner chooses to delegate that responsibility to their domain host chooses to host and the domain host chooses to offer that service, I think it's perfectly appropriate. I think its reasonable for a domain host insist that these addresses exist and be deliverable. OTOH, if a provider prevented me from controlling these addresses in my domains so I could monitor postmaster/abuse, I'd definitely be cancelling my account. If you choose to continue this policy it should be clearly explained in your terms of service. Scott K
