Introduction
Please note: The Catch-All Mailmap Audit pertains to catch-all email addresses only. Regular mailmaps are not affected by this and will continue to function normally.

In order to

1. reduce spam and unwanted email received by our users
2. alleviate problems we have forwarding email to some ISPs

We are undertaking a one-time "Catch-All MailMap Audit" to phase out unused catch-all mailmaps which are still forwarding junk email.

We are not phasing out any functionality or removing any features. All catch-all mailmaps will continue to work in the manner our members are accustomed to. We are simply undertaking a process to de-active UNUSED catch-all mailmaps

Background
Historically, when a new DNS-only or parked domain was added to the system, we automatically provisioned the domain with an active catch-all mailmap, which would forward all email addressed for anything at that domain to the member's email address in their member profile.

This industry practice has been very much abused by spammers, who carry out what are known as "dictionary attacks" on domains, where they simply forward multitudes of junk mail addressed to random addresses within a domain which are then forwarded via the catch-all email map to the easyDNS member.

We no longer provision domains with this feature turned on. It is still available, but must be enabled by the member before it will work.

Purpose
The Catch-All Mailmap Audit is a one-time process to phase out any catch-all mailmaps which were activated in the past which are not being actively used by our members.

This will result in lower amounts of spam traversing our system, lower amounts of spam reaching our members, and reduce the problems we have forwarding legitimate email to other networks.

Implementation
We will email all affected users and ask them to confirm any catch-all mailmaps in their account.

They can do this by logging into their member accounts and accessing the email settings for their domain names.

Any unconfirmed mailmaps will have an indicator that this mailmap is unconfirmed



There will also be a bulk utility to confirm multiple domain names.



This bulk confirm utility can be found from the "utilities" module.



All mailmaps will continue to function normally until the audit cutoff date (see Timeline below).

Catch-All Mailmaps which have been confirmed by our members during the audit will continue to function as usual after the audit cutoff date.

After the audit cutoff date, we will begin DEFERRING email destined for all unconfirmed mailmaps. This means we will not accept email destined for the catch-all mailmaps which are still unconfirmed, but we will not yet bounce them, we will defer them with a temporary "try again later" error which will cause the remote mail server to hang on to the email and try again later. If the member then confirms the mailmap in question, the email will be accepted on the retry and routed normally.

Thus, in the grace period after the audit cutoff date, it will still be possible to confirm unconfirmed mailmaps without losing any mail.

After the grace period terminates, all unconfirmed mailmaps will be purged from the system. All email destined for unconfirmed catch-all mailmaps will cease to function and hard bounce with a permanent error to the sender. Any normal mailmaps (non-catch-all) within an account that has an unnconfirmed catch-all mailmap will continue to function normally.

Timeline

Aug 21 :

• Audit starts
• email notice to affected members

Aug 28 - Sept 18 :

• weekly notices to any users with unconfirmed addresses

Sept 18 - Sept 25 :

• daily notices to users with unconfirmed addresses

Sept 25 :

• Audit cutoff date, all unconfirmed catch-alls begin deferring mail
• email notice sent to affected users

Sept 25 - Sept 29 :

• last ditch effort to notify unconfirmed catch-alls

Sept 29 :

• all remaining unconfirmed catch-alls purged from system