is mail@ considered not valid as a local-part

JamesHenderson · 10 Dec 2022, 10:12 PM

Hi,

I recently asked for my email to be changed on change.org. I wanted to change it from my my_name@my_domain.tld to mail@my_domain.tld

I have been doing this on and off for years using mail@ for mailing lists and general logons that aren't personal and keeping my_name@ for friends and 'real' people. I find it helps me sort my inbox.

However change.org came back and told me that whilst they can make the change, they wanted to warn me that mail@ isn't considered valid as a local-part by a lot of systems due to its generic name. I guess this is important to change.org given they are a petitions website.

Has anyone else come across this?

jarland · 11 Dec 2022, 02:30 AM

I'll admit that there are a lot of old rules out there that I don't know because they're irrelevant to actual, real world situations today. But what I can say for sure is that the numbers below show how many users on each one of my servers have a mail@ address, and I have zero complaints about them not receiving email:

Quote:

root@gw:~# darun grep \"mail\:\" /etc/virtual/*/passwd \| wc -l
longhorn.mxrouting.net: 24
lucy.mxrouting.net: 48
tuesday.mxrouting.net: 48
redbull.mxrouting.net: 25
monday.mxrouting.net: 117
wednesday.mxrouting.net: 12
moose.mxrouting.net: 81
eagle.mxlogin.com: 129
arrow.mxrouting.net: 97
safari.mxrouting.net: 33
shadow.mxrouting.net: 78
blizzard.mxrouting.net: 58
echo.mxrouting.net: 102
sunfire.mxrouting.net: 87
london.mxroute.com: 56
pixel.mxrouting.net: 39
taylor.mxrouting.net: 108

JamesHenderson · 11 Dec 2022, 02:51 AM

Wow - thanks for going to the trouble of getting that info.

I’ve been using mail@ for the better part of 20 years with no issue as well.

Thanks for confirming.

SethM · 15 Dec 2022, 06:44 AM

No, that's not a forbidden local-part. RFC 5322 is what I would refer to.

TenFour · 16 Dec 2022, 04:58 AM

I suspect you might have issues with a generic address like info@ or mail@ being more likely to be classified as spam by some systems, and on the other side of the coin it will attract a lot more spam being sent to it. One thing I have done, that seems to work like a charm, is just choose some other ficitious name that sounds legit but doesn't reveal anything about you. For example, if your name is donald use george@ You will know in an instant that email coming in isn't someone who knows you.

10 Dec 2022, 10:12 PM	#1
JamesHenderson Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Oxfordshire, UK Posts: 603	is mail@ considered not valid as a local-part Hi, I recently asked for my email to be changed on change.org. I wanted to change it from my my_name@my_domain.tld to mail@my_domain.tld I have been doing this on and off for years using mail@ for mailing lists and general logons that aren't personal and keeping my_name@ for friends and 'real' people. I find it helps me sort my inbox. However change.org came back and told me that whilst they can make the change, they wanted to warn me that mail@ isn't considered valid as a local-part by a lot of systems due to its generic name. I guess this is important to change.org given they are a petitions website. Has anyone else come across this?

11 Dec 2022, 02:51 AM	#3
JamesHenderson Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Oxfordshire, UK Posts: 603	Wow - thanks for going to the trouble of getting that info. I’ve been using mail@ for the better part of 20 years with no issue as well. Thanks for confirming.

15 Dec 2022, 06:44 AM	#4
SethM Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Nevada Posts: 142 Representative of: Rollernet.us	No, that's not a forbidden local-part. RFC 5322 is what I would refer to.

16 Dec 2022, 04:58 AM	#5
TenFour Master of the @ Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: USA Posts: 1,734	I suspect you might have issues with a generic address like info@ or mail@ being more likely to be classified as spam by some systems, and on the other side of the coin it will attract a lot more spam being sent to it. One thing I have done, that seems to work like a charm, is just choose some other ficitious name that sounds legit but doesn't reveal anything about you. For example, if your name is donald use george@ You will know in an instant that email coming in isn't someone who knows you.