RFC 2142 Proposed Standard Anti-abuse and operations

Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions

This specification enumerates and describes Internet mail addresses (mailbox name @ host reference) to be used when contacting personnel at an organization. [STANDARDS-TRACK]

Status
Proposed Standard. On the standards track and stable enough to implement against. Most of the email stack stays at this level permanently.
Published
May 1997
Authors
D. Crocker
Read it
rfc-editor.org · errata · DOI

What it is

Reserves role mailboxes such as abuse@, postmaster@ and security@ for every domain that runs a service.

What it solves

There was no reliable way to reach whoever operates a domain when its mail is misbehaving.

What it means to operate

postmaster@ and abuse@ must exist and must be read by a person. Several providers and blocklists check that they accept mail before considering a delisting request, and a bounce from abuse@ is a bad look during an incident.

Blocklist check checks the lists that record domains with no working abuse or postmaster mailbox. Open blocklist check

Normative requirements

Every sentence in this RFC carrying an RFC 2119 keyword, with the section it came from.

6 MAILING LIST ADMINISTRATION MAILBOX

  • MUSTthere MUST be the administrative mailbox name:
  • REQUIREDLIST-SPECIFIC (-REQUEST) MAILBOX NAMES ARE REQUIRED, INDEPENDENT OF THE AVAILABILITY OF GENERIC LIST SOFTWARE MAILBOX NAMES.

Every current email RFC

Written and maintained by Rastu Singh, an infrastructure engineer working on high-volume email in Tallinn.