well, that is all well and good, but I kept getting all or virtually all of my mail for the several months that I had no MX record. I don't think it was SMTP server specific either, because I got mail everywhere from hotmail to tiny, rural Australia ISPs. I kept getting mail from servers that I had never recieved mail from before and never sent mail to, as well. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tracy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 11:12 AM Subject: [xmail] Re: question on mx records and spam
> At 10:54 7/24/2003, vin wrote: > >I had never bothered putting an mx record for my server, because I seemed to > >be getting mail fine without it and I seem to remember from a while back, > >some discussion that under some circumstances, mx records are not needed. > >then the people at my dad's hospital changed their routers firmware or > >something and he could no longer email me, because his servers need an mx > >record. I put one, and now I get 1000% more spam. Is this a coincidence? > >under what circumstances should I NOT need an mx record? the IT people know > >it is a configuration error on their part, but I do not really understand > >how mail gets delivered with no mx record, or if this is a good thing > > An MX record is always required (per relevant RFCs) for a mail server that > will be receiving mail from the Internet. An MX record is not (absolutely) > required for a mail server that *only* sends mail. > > The reason you never got spam before is because your mail server was not an > Internet mail server until you put up the MX record. When someone sends > mail to you, their mail server does an MX lookup on the domain that the > mail is addressed to. If it cannot find it, it fails and returns the mail > to the sender as undeliverable (or, at least, that's the way it's supposed > to work - obviously there can be mailers that are configured internally to > handle mail to specific domains directly rather than through MX record > lookups). > > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe xmail" in > the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For general help: send the line "help" in the body of a message to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe xmail" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For general help: send the line "help" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
