Should I set up standard email accounts? What are they?

Question

A long time ago one used to be able to count on domains having addresses like [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] ... is this convention dead?

Note: I always try to make sure to make a contact available on the websites I put up, so people can contact us if necessary. But are there reasons to handle these or other "standard" email addresses I might not be thinking of? I set up less email addresses than I used to since spam got so awful, and a "predictable" email address just seems to be an invitation to the lousy spammers.

Answer 1

There's no reason to create them all as individual e-mail accounts. You can just set up forwarders that lead to a generic site.admin@ account and set up a filter for that in your mail client to keep the noise isolated.

You'll want them, because:

• webmaster@ is where good natured people do things like report broken links, it happens more than you'd think!
• abuse@ is nice to have, it sometimes keeps people from going directly to your host / data center / bandwidth provider in the event that someone found a way to use your server to send SPAM.
• postmaster@ is handy to check, and make sure root's mail is also sent there, at the least it will show you if your mail server is configured incorrectly, it will also catch bounces that let you know you have a spammer.
• hostmaster@ is strongly recommended by RFC2142 as a well-known mailbox name for your DNS zone's SOA record.

I usually check my 'catch all' once a week and clean it out. It only takes a few minutes. Once in a while you find a real gem, which is something like "Your site helped me, I just wanted to say thanks for the resource!" .. which always makes your day :)

This, of course in addition to the convenience of automatically generated SSL certificates - SSL providers will send confirmation email to one of the above addresses, so you need to be able to receive it.

Answer 2

Every RIPE LIR (Réseaux IP Européens Local Internet Registry) must have an abuse@ account and based on the RFC 2141 the webmaster@ (http), postmaster@ (smtp) or hostmaster@ (dns) addresses are used by most (all?) Providers.

So if you don't want to be an LIR and don't use certificates, you are mostly free to set your mail addresses any way you want.

Answer 3

If you plan on purchasing a domain-validated SSL, admin@ is generally a good one to have, as the domain-validated certificates use a small list of hard-coded email addresses, and admin@ is generally one of them.

Answer 4

I have mine set up so that [email protected] gets sent to me. This takes care of possibly missing anything.

So far I have not gotten much spam, however my sites are not to large, so that could change.

Then any address I want to send mail from I set up.

Answer 5

Sorry but going back to the [email protected], or [email protected], it is super critical to have one of two and register it with abuse.net.

Most feedback loops (when the SPAM button or junk button is hit) will send the data, similar to an email bounce log in a JMR (Microsoft) or ARF format to the address registered with Abuse.net.

WIth DMARC upon is registering is a good idea. You will notice that GSuite reserve abuse@ and postmaster@ for your domain making them a 'group' for access to, then you need to forward the data, I am not a fan.

Answer 6

My recommended, well-known standard emails are:

The ones listed here for AWS Certificate Manager email validation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/email-validation.html

administrator@your_domain_name

hostmaster@your_domain_name

postmaster@your_domain_name

webmaster@your_domain_name

admin@your_domain_name

And additionally: abuse@your_domain_name

I think these addresses cover all the well-known standard emails.