The first thing that the mail server does when a message arrives is check to make sure that a user is actually on the server to receive that message. If the user does not exist it immediately rejects the message and sends it back to the person that sent it.

How many times have you received an email to sjflskejesk@yourdomain.com and think how can I stop that from getting to me? This is a common technique for spammers and one that can be easily stopped on your account if you use a simple but relatively unused procedure.

:fail:

:fail: is a simple yet powerful tool that everyone should use on their account. :fail: should be used as your default address and is currently used here at Simply Hosting on all new account setups. When you have your default address set to your default email address all email will be delivered and you will potentially receive a lot of email sent by spammers that you never wanted.

What does :fail: do. If :fail: is set as your default address and a message arrives to an email that does not exist it rejects the message. It is actually very simple in its usage and easy to setup and should be the first thing to check on your account.

If you are worried about not receiving email to certain email addresses like abuse@ or postmaster@ (which are technically required to be set on every domain) then setup a forward that has abuse@ and postmaster@ forward to an email address of your choice. As long as the email has somewhere to go (either to a setup email box or a forward) it will not be rejected and sent back from whence it came.

How do I accomplish this you ask? View Flash Tutorial

Gustave Dahl