> On Jan 26, 2016, at 15.52, Steve Jenkins <st...@stevejenkins.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 12:07 PM, btb <b...@bitrate.net> wrote: > On 2016.01.26 10.54, Matt Bayliss wrote: > I'm trying to find the correct/best practice method for setting up a > black hole email address for such items as "noreply" addresses when > sending alerts from monitoring devices etc. > > if you intend no mail to be sent to this address anyway, and will just throw > away any mail that arrives, then why bother accepting mail for the address at > all? pick an address you like, configure your various devices to use it when > sending mail, and don't worry about postfix. if someone tries to send mail > to that address, postfix will reject it. > > Yep. It all boils down to what you want to occur if someone replies to the > "noreply" address. > > 1) Want the reply to disappear and not bounce back to the sender? Point the > noreply alias to /dev/null (that's different than setting up a "noreply" user > -- an alias is not a user account). > > 2) Want the reply to bounce back to the sender? Make sure you don't have a > noreply alias or catchall, and Postfix will send the appropriate "no such > recipient" error to the sender. > > 3) Want to send a custom "Sorry, we don't check this email account so please > don't expect a reply" message to the sender? Set up an auto-reply (and send > the incoming message at /dev/null), but do so prudently so as to avoid any > backscatter concerns (seriously... backscatter and auto-reply wars are no > bueno). > > Option has the most potential pitfalls, so I'm a fan of Options 1 and 2. Both > are completely acceptable as "best practices" for "black hole" email > addresses for alerts from monitoring devices.
fwiw, i would never consider accepting mail and then discarding it "best practices" [which is a term i'm not fond of anyway] - especially if you knew full well that was your intent before the message even arrived. very much agreed on the backscatter/autoresponder caution though. -ben
