Blackhole or Fail - Which One Is Better For Your Mail Server?

Very often SPAMMERS take advantage of catch-all email setup on webservers. Every email no matter what the recipients email address is will be caught by the default email account. It is highly recommended not to use catch-all email accounts and to discard SPAM send to non-existing email addresses. SPAM will clog up your SMTP server and consum resources like bandwidth and disk space in mailboxes. In most mail servers and web control panels (like cPanel) the user or admin can decide what will happen to emails with no existing recipient on the server. Refuse to the let emails onto the server and to let the sender's mail server deal with it (option: ":fail:") or to accept these incoming messages but then to delete them right away (option: ":blackhole:".

Our conclusion:

:fail: is the preferred option over :blackhole:.

The :blackhole: option accepts everything sent to the domain mail server and then throws away the email going to a non-existing email account. This option uses the full amount of bandwidth, and also requires that the server be reading and writing messages to disk before they are deleted... multiply this by 1,000 messages a day or so and you can imagine the impact onto your server resources. Imagine your an email address from your domain (a non-existing one) has been spoofed to send out SPAM messages that even carry a virus. Most natural many of these messages will bounce back and hit your mail server. Your web server would have to deal with thousands of attachments at a time. Performance will go down - no matter what.

:fail: stops emails send to invalid recipients from entering the mail server in the first place..Exim will reject each message during the smtp handshake conversation - therefore the actual email message will never make it to your server. It is being refected from entering your system and the sender's email server has to deal with the stuck message. This option is also the better one for legitimate emails where the sender has actually mis-spelled the recipients email address. He would get a bounce message informing him so that the error can be corrected. Depending on your hardware - a server can handle many more :fails: than it can do :blackholes:.

This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is provided. (this note can be removed as long as a link from the author's resource box is provided)

Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com

---

Do You Know Whats in Your Trash?

A hearty welcome to all the spam fighting filters and... Read More

Spam with Typos: Why Do They All Have Spelling Errors?

A friend asked me: I don't get it. Why do... Read More

Dont Give the Spammers Your Address From Your Page

Spammers get email addresses from web pages using programs called... Read More

Quickly Eliminate 100% of Your Junk Email

Why do so many people think I need to take... Read More

Spammer in the Slammer: Jeremy Jaynes Sentenced to Nine Years

Will other spammers take heed? Don't count on it.Jeremy Jaynes... Read More

How You Can Avoid The New Dangers Of Spam

Until recently, spam has been an annoyance, a definite load... Read More

Is Your Website Blacklisted?

A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of... Read More

Sick Of Wading Through Spam?

It's a nightmare isn't it? You fire up your email... Read More

Stop Spam! New Spam Blockers

News last week that Internet service provider Verizon settled its... Read More

How Spammers Fool Spam Blacklists - And How to Stop Them

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than... Read More

Invasion of the Email Snatchers

They're sneaky. And stealthy. They're quiet and mostly unobtrusive, but... Read More

Ignoring These Tips Could Result in an Inbox Full of Spam

Although there still seem to be some differences among the... Read More

The Business Of Sending Spam

You all tear your hair out in frustration every time... Read More

Spam eMails Are Not Just Annoying - They Are A Main Distributor Of Viruses

Why is someone from India, Africa, or elsewhere writing you... Read More

Are You A Spam Zombie?

Over the past few years you've all become familiar with... Read More

Demand for Spam? It exists

Do you like spam? No, I'm not kidding. Everybody knows... Read More

Spammer Stole My Email Address?

Do you get bounced, or rejected emails sent by someone... Read More

How To Identify Spam

Most of us have opened our email program and found,... Read More

Avoiding the Spam Trap: Get Your Message Delivered!

Your message is not being delivered.If you send emails to... Read More

Fight Spam and Fortify Your Web Site with RSS

RSS is the answer to the Spam epidemic of the... Read More

Email Spam and Phishing

It seems like the volume of email spam has doubled... Read More

ANTI-S*P^A#M: Protecting Your Web Sites Email Address(es)

Did you know that there are software programs that view... Read More

Email Chain Letters - Harmless Fun or Not?

I'm sure I'm not the only person on the planet... Read More

The Cybermagic of Whitelists

Before we start getting deep into the meat of this... Read More

How to Avoid Spam Complaints in Your Emails

Spam filters are responsible for deleting a high percentage of... Read More

Spam The Spammer - Will It Work?

Spam is everywhere. It's the "in-box lunch meat" nobody likes,... Read More

The Great Spam Scam: Five Strategies To Stop Brand and Revenue Robbery

Marketers usually think of anti-spam tactics as 'how to prevent'... Read More

Your Dolphin E-mail Caught In Spam Tuna Net?

Let me ask a couple of questions:If (potential) customers sends... Read More

Dont Look Spammy!

We all hate spam and get way too much of... Read More

FTC Botches Fight on SPAM, Microsoft Takes Over the Battle

While the Federal Trade Commission is busy fighting over definitions... Read More

5 Zero-Cost Spam Prevention Tools For All Situations!

Anyone who uses email knows what Spam is!It's annoying and... Read More

Phishing for an Identity

Phishing is rapidly becoming on the largest threats to your... Read More

Evict the Spammers from Your Inbox

Block Spam and Other Email Threats From Entering Your Gateway... Read More