But there should be no valid email address unless you provide it in the Anonymous Email form. The software is called Anonymous Email (may need to log in first).Įven with Anonymous Email, the domain name where the email is sent from will be in the complete headers. In that case, a recent addition to WebSite's Secret may be used. If your email software does in fact embed a valid email address, spammers can harvest it. If you don't see a Received header line, you're not looking at complete headers. When you see complete headers, there will always be at least one Received line. Some email software calls this "full" headers, some "raw" headers, or a related name. When receiving the test email, view the complete headers. You can test this by sending an email to yourself and checking it. Some email software will embed a real email address in a Received or other header line even when the From or Reply-To are spoofed. Situations may come up where sending an email to someone would be a kind gesture, reporting an error on a website, for example, yet there is a desire to remain anonymous.Įmails through traditional email software. But, in case it is a real person or prospective customer asking a serious question, an anonymous response can be emailed, an email with a link to a contact form that can be used instead of clicking "reply." Usually one-liners like "Do you sell things?", "Put me on your list.", "Is it cold by you?", or another equally silly. Inane questions and statements are likely to be trolling. The spammer is looking to harvest a real, live email address from the reply. On occasion, there are valid reasons for sendingĪn email from a black hole email address.Ĭontact forms can be used by spammers to ask a question looking for a response from you. Sending Email From a Black Hole (Invalid) Email Address You don't see the spam sent to you and nobody gets inundated with bounces. Generally, black holing invalid email addresses is a good idea. Bouncing spam is sent back to the sender, which might also seem a good thing, except the sender is likely to be spoofed and the email bounced to an innocent person. However, it is rare a real person will make up an address to send you an email. The bounce at first glance may seem a good idea. Spam is sent to hundreds of words addresses assuming at least one will be delivered to a mailbox. Sometimes spammers do what is called a dictionary attack. The email is bounced, returned to sender as undeliverable.Ī catch-all can result in a lot of spam. If email comes in for the domain with an address that is not set up, something has to be done with the email.Ī catch-all is set up to forward all such email to a certain mailbox. Many email addresses may be set up for a domain. It is how we typically set up emails for our domains. Your hosting company may have a helpful control panel that does not require you to know that specific bit of technical information.Īll email without a valid email address can be black holed instead of bouncing. Typically, the email address is redirected to /dev/null instead of a regular email address. There are two ways to set up email black holes.Ī specific email address may be created and specifically assigned as a black hole. Save yourself a ton of spam by causing all mail sent to invalid emailĪddresses for your domain to be black holed.Įmail with a "black hole address". Any email sent to those addresses are ignored. The Why and How of Black Holed Email AddressesĮmail addresses can be black holed.
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