New Home / Old Mail

[Nexus]

So, you've just caught your latest drop, and you've set up your domain at your favorite Registrar. Could be your registrar gives you what's often called a "global-email alias" automatically forwarding all e-mail to the domain towards your Administrative contact. Or, maybe your new hosting service has the "catch-all" e-mail setting on by default, and just after configuring your brand-new website... it begins... all the mailing lists and newsletters that the old owner has signed up for... is starting to come to YOU!

It's like if you've purchased a new house and the previous owner, a kind yet elderly woman who passed away months before, is still receiving mail (not like they can forward it to the local cemetary can they?) So, you're getting all of her magazines and bills... and... well... porn... porn as far as the eye can see, great big heaping piles of it... well, you get the picture.

Humor aside, apart from simply not using your catch-all on new/expired domains, has anyone come up with any ingenuous tactics for erasing the subsription "history" of an old domain name (at least from "cooperative" friendly sites) en masse?

It's amazing that no matter how long a domain is down, that e-mail will pick right back up and "bounces" be damned!

~ Nexus

 

[Mr Webname]

Should be able to block addresses, domains etc from the hosting package with any reasonable server/webmail etc. I block at source at my servers - if you have Cpanel installed you can set email for any name to :fail: and it will bounce, just remember to allow the mail username you want.
Failing (or as well as!) that install mailwasher from www.mailwasher.net and you can train it to delete/bounce whatever you don't want.

 

[.com.net.org]

tough job.

 

[revsorg]

The problem of spam is reason enough to go out and buy yourself a minty fresh domain name.

 

[Nexus]

Thanks, MrWeb, but I'm wondering if there is something more extreme and global one could do to "reboot" a domain. I'm no technical newbie asking the impossible with wide-eyed anticipation, but I'm always game for radical suggestions. I was just reading Edwin's post on how Google was noting that expired domains that have been penalized, will *keep* their penalties, recommending that people do research when registering or catching domains. Clearly, there's not much one can do in that arena, but on the message of mail...

I know there's lots of blacklists people could subscribe to and different types of blocking software. That's welcome advice too. I'd wondering more about the exotic solutions though, if they exist (and may not).

Let me think... well, the first thing that comes to my mind is whether there is a generally excepted "feedback" from a mail server that says "we're gone", or some other automated "feedback" that is otherwise undesireable and would make any sender take you off immediately. Have mail-senders learned to detect "auto-responders" and to STOP mailing people who have left these on and caused a feedback loop of sorts? I would imagine such mechanism would be anathema and need immediate remedy. --Of course, the senders could simply ignore these much like the "bounce" messages they obviously pay little attention to.

Hm. Brand spanking new certainly looks increasingly appealing... at this point. No one has seen any articles on "Scrubbing" a Dropped Name 101 (make sure you clean behind the ears)? This might also refer to making sure you're not in trouble. Some recommendations being to make sure you're address wasn't sending spam, or used for a scam or fraud. "InstaKiss.com" comes to mind as the name of a huge AOL scam that was notorious for stealing passwords.

~ Nexus