On 5/5/2013 3:39 AM, LuKreme wrote: > I have several domains on my postfix server, and I have one where the owner > wants the following behavior: > > us...@domain.tld = real user account > us...@domain.tld = real user account > *@domain.tld = mail checks accepted, actual mail dropped. > > basically, some servers sent a query to the mailserver to see if an email > address is accepted by the server, and she wants any email address to pass > this check, but for actual emails to any addresses other than user1 or user2 > to be dropped.
This was a common anti-spam technique ~15 years ago when both the spammers and anti-spam countermeasures were far cruder. No doubt your customer read about this technique in some ancient article on avoiding spam. It's good they're trying to educate themselves, but they stopped too soon. The idea back then was to keep valid email addresses a secret from the spammers. The side effect was that misrouted mail disappeared into a black hole with no notice to either the sender or recipient. Sometimes this was important mail. People were unhappy. These days, spammers have better ways to find email addresses. Don't expect any valid address that's used by more than a handful of recipients to stay secret for long. There's also the apparent effect of wildcard domains being "spam attractors". It seems that spammers-for-hire, who are paid per delivery, may target wildcard domains to pad their delivery numbers (I'm NOT talking about legit bulk mailers). Best practices often change with time. Invite your customer to the 21st century. Wildcard domains are no longer recommended, and for good reasons. -- Noel Jones > > This has to be isolated to just this domain, without affecting the way all > the other domains on the same mailserver work. > > Not sure how to set this up, partly because I'm not sure what these mail > checks involve. I was guessing it was simply a connection that send a RCPT > header and then dropped it after OK? >
