How to make Plusnet bounce emails for unwanted email addresses
In http://email.plus.net/ you have the ability to create a re-direct to blackhole. This is fine if you only ever receive spam to the email address and you just want it all silently dumped. However it isn't a great solution if there is a chance that there's someone you forgot to notify that you were dropping the email address because you could lose a genuine email as the sender doesn't get a bounce message.
Solution: Instead of creating a redirect to blackhole, create a redirect to a totally invalid email address (I use email.blocked@mailbox.inv - the important thing is that the domain is invalid). Now, if an email is sent to this address Plusnet will bounce it instead of silently dropping it.
Example: Some time ago I created a mailbox on my account for bobpullen to test a specific issue. Now it's no longer required I have changed it to a redirect as above. Here's the result when I try sending an email to that address:
Note: Although this forces the Plusnet email system to behave as you would expect and bounce emails for which there is no mailbox it does risk increasing back-scatter* and so should only be used with due consideration.
* If a spammer is spoofing someone's email address the spoofed address will get a bounce where with black-holing they receive nothing.
Solution: Instead of creating a redirect to blackhole, create a redirect to a totally invalid email address (I use email.blocked@mailbox.inv - the important thing is that the domain is invalid). Now, if an email is sent to this address Plusnet will bounce it instead of silently dropping it.
Example: Some time ago I created a mailbox on my account for bobpullen to test a specific issue. Now it's no longer required I have changed it to a redirect as above. Here's the result when I try sending an email to that address:
Quote from Mail Delivery System MAILER-DAEMON@ptn-ipout02.plus.net
to me@gmail.com
date 10 September 2011 09:32
subject Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
mailed-by relay.ptn-ipout02.plus.net
The following message to <email.blocked@mailbox.inv> was undeliverable.
The reason for the problem:
5.1.2 - Bad destination host 'DNS Hard Error looking up mailbox.inv (MX): NXDomain'
Final-Recipient: rfc822;email.blocked@mailbox.inv
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0 (permanent failure)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 5.1.2 - Bad destination host 'DNS Hard Error looking up mailbox.inv (MX): NXDomain' (delivery attempts: 0)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Me <me@gmail.com>
To: bobpullen@myaccount.plus.com
Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:32:26 +0100
Subject: Test
Test email bounce
Note: Although this forces the Plusnet email system to behave as you would expect and bounce emails for which there is no mailbox it does risk increasing back-scatter* and so should only be used with due consideration.
* If a spammer is spoofing someone's email address the spoofed address will get a bounce where with black-holing they receive nothing.
