[General] Default Address Changes

As most of you are aware, we have been sending out notices to those clients that have their default address set to deliver mail. Throughout all of this, we have been considering some changes to make in the way the default address setup works. These changes have nothing but the best intentions in mind for all users as a whole. We believe the changes will benefit the server’s performance, which at the same time will benefit you as an end user. These changes are explained further below.

It should be noted that if you have not already adjusted your default address setting and you have no use for your default address, then you should consider making these adjustments. The last blog post provides a good detail of how to go about accomplishing this. There is also a guide available that tells you how to disable your default address.

Please note, we are not removing the function of the default address. We have received a few e-mails with this concern. I know there are is a slight minority out there that wishes to continue using their default address. This is fine, we are not going to take this functionality away from you. You will just have to compromise with us as we try to increase overall server performance, while continuing to support your needs.

The following changes are what we are proposing to make and from the looks of it, it looks like these changes may be adopted early next week, baring any further concerns.

Proposal 1 – Disabling SpamAssassin on accounts that utilize their default address. This is part of a compromise. We believe that your default address is going to receive a lot of spam. If you really think about it, this is not a far-fetched belief. Your default address represents an infinite number of e-mail addresses. Whereas if you create a mail account or a mail forwarder, those addresses only receive e-mail if a sender explicitly sends a message to it. With the default address, a spammer can send out a spam message to literally thousands of bogus e-mail addresses at your domain name and they would all be picked up by your default address. This just makes filtering those messages with SpamAssassin all the more wasteful. Everytime SpamAssassin is invoked, it takes up server resources. If the server is invoking SpamAssassin every time a spam message is sent to a bogus e-mail address on the server, this is taking up server resources that could be used somewhere else on the server. By disabling SpamAssassin on accounts that use their default address, we are still allowing access and functionality to the default address for those clients that want this, but they won’t be able to use SpamAssassin filtering. For those users, it just becomes a case of what is more important to you, server-side spam filtering or a server-side default address?

Proposal 2 – Disallow the default address to forward off of the server. Again, this issue goes back to the default address receiving a high percentage of spam messages. Any time you forward mail off of the server you run the risk of getting the server blacklisted or blocked. When you forward mail off of the server, if the destination server thinks the message is spam, they will see the message as being sent by our server and may block or blacklist our server. When our server becomes blacklisted or blocked, then nobody on the server can send out mail from our server. We have seen instances in the past where a blacklist of our server has been traced back to someone forwarding their default address off of the server. We do have other preventive measures in place that aims to prevent spam messages from being forwarded off of our server, but these measures are not 100% reliable. Couple that with the fact that the default address is likely going to receive a lot of spam and it is easy to see why you should not forward your default address off of the server.

While this proposal will prevent you from using your default address in some manner, it won’t directly stop you from using your default address. If you feel that you must use your default address, then you need to set it to deliver mail locally on the server instead of forwarding it off of the server. This proposed change would only affect those clients that are forwarding their default address off of the server.

Barring any other unforeseen circumstances, we will likely begin rolling out these changes early next week. If you have any comments concerning these changes, you should let us know, so that we can deal with those concerns or push back these changes.

I really do not think these changes will affect the vast majority of our clients. You will just notice better server performance due to increase server resources.

Scott Mutter

Director of Administration