Unknown email user notification

As nice as it is to notify people that they may have mis-typed an email address, the current spam climate makes that polite response a bad idea. It's better to just silently throw the messages away. Notifying the spammer either lets them know that you exist or just clogs up your mail queue with undeliverable messages because their return address is bogus.

There are a number of ways to handle that. See SME server virus scan notification and double bounce if you are using SME. If you control your mail server, you may have a way to silently ignore such mail. Sendmail defaults to that behavior, but if you have multiple domains, etc. it may not be doing that.

If your mail server no other way to do this, you may have a "catch-all" account you can direct to a specific user. Unknown users will then go to that account. You can put rules into your mail client that just silently delete all mail that comes there. That effectively prevents any notification, so that helps mailserver congestion, but it still means all those messages have to be downloaded. Better that than nothing, though.

Comments?

More Articles by Tony Lawrence - Find me on Google+

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.