Namesco email bounces as if from postmaster@nezumi.dcu

[Martin Brown]

Never say never again! Another Namesco email configuration SNAFU

I have just found out that when people send email to a miss spelled
email address at my new domain [redacted].co.uk the bounce response from
the Office365 MS mail server claims that it comes from postmaster at the
no longer extant legacy subdomain nezumi.demon.co.uk

I am sure I tested this as working OK shortly after Demonic D-day too!

I checked a couple of other ex-Demon folk today and found the same is
true for them. ie. Sending email to randomstring@ their new domain name.

It should bounce as if from postmaster@[redacted].co.uk.

It is very confusing for correspondents to get a reply apparently from a
legacy subdomain that no longer exists & they have been told not to use!

I suggest you check your own "undeliverable" bounce messages too!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 17:31:59, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote (my responses usually follow points
raised):

>Never say never again! Another Namesco email configuration SNAFU
>
>I have just found out that when people send email to a miss spelled
>email address at my new domain [redacted].co.uk the bounce response
>from the Office365 MS mail server claims that it comes from postmaster
>at the no longer extant legacy subdomain nezumi.demon.co.uk

I think others have reported this, a few months ago - certainly that
bounce messages were coming "from" the dead *.d.c.u domain, though
whether triggered by a mis-spelled address at otherwise the correct new
one, I don't remember.
[]

>I checked a couple of other ex-Demon folk today and found the same is
>true for them. ie. Sending email to randomstring@ their new domain name.
>
>It should bounce as if from postmaster@[redacted].co.uk.

I suppose you should be relieved that bounce messages are being sent at
all. Though it's arguable whether a misleading bounce message is
preferable to no bounce at all.
[]
Personally, I'm surprised at the arrangement anyway: both with the old
*.d.c.u domains (or subdomains), and with my current one (arranged
through TSOhost, IIRR after good reports of them here), _anything_
before the @ was/is available to the user, to deal with as they wish; I
thought that was some of the point of having one's own domain. I suppose
_some_ users are happy to have Namesco deal with mis-spelled before-@
emails, but I'd have thought _most_ ex-demon folk - being long in the
tooth as most of us are and thus knowledgeable about the arcane aspects
of email, at least to this extent - would prefer to deal themselves. The
Namesco/Office365 arrangement - which I've had to deal with while
helping another - seems needlessly complex to me.

[I actually, for reasons I won't go into (though aren't secret - I'll
share if anyone wants to know) have any email to my domain forwarded to
my PlusNet address (which no-one but TSOHost and PlusNet themselves
use), but the "To: " headers remain intact, so I can route things based
on those.]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy,
novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

[Martin Brown]

On 27/11/2020 00:04, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 17:31:59, Martin Brown
> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote (my responses usually follow points
> raised):
>> Never say never again! Another Namesco email configuration SNAFU
>>
>> I have just found out that when people send email to a miss spelled
>> email address at my new domain [redacted].co.uk the bounce response
>> from the Office365 MS mail server claims that it comes from postmaster
>> at the no longer extant legacy subdomain nezumi.demon.co.uk
>
> I think others have reported this, a few months ago - certainly that
> bounce messages were coming "from" the dead *.d.c.u domain, though
> whether triggered by a mis-spelled address at otherwise the correct new
> one, I don't remember.
> []
>> I checked a couple of other ex-Demon folk today and found the same is
>> true for them. ie. Sending email to randomstring@ their new domain name.
>>
>> It should bounce as if from postmaster@[redacted].co.uk.
>
> I suppose you should be relieved that bounce messages are being sent at
> all. Though it's arguable whether a misleading bounce message is
> preferable to no bounce at all.
> []
> Personally, I'm surprised at the arrangement anyway: both with the old
> *.d.c.u domains (or subdomains), and with my current one (arranged
> through TSOhost, IIRR after good reports of them here), _anything_
> before the @ was/is available to the user, to deal with as they wish; I
> thought that was some of the point of having one's own domain. I suppose

It is up to a point but you can no longer have a catch all that accepts
everything since it went to 365, you have to explicitly declare every
alias that you want to accept. Some of my email local parts are rather
prone to people misspelling them when given over the phone.

Mine is easy enough to spell but others are not.

> _some_ users are happy to have Namesco deal with mis-spelled before-@
> emails, but I'd have thought _most_ ex-demon folk - being long in the
> tooth as most of us are and thus knowledgeable about the arcane aspects
> of email, at least to this extent - would prefer to deal themselves. The
> Namesco/Office365 arrangement - which I've had to deal with while
> helping another - seems needlessly complex to me.

The incoming mail that gives me the most headaches with the 365 system
are BCCs from whitelisted senders. Even with custom rules I haven't been
able to devise a classifier that gets them all to the right person.

I miss TP's custom regex rules and have never found anything equivalent
that will work in Thunderbird. There was an old addin that claimed to do
it but it never worked in any version I tried as far as I could tell.

> [I actually, for reasons I won't go into (though aren't secret - I'll
> share if anyone wants to know) have any email to my domain forwarded to
> my PlusNet address (which no-one but TSOHost and PlusNet themselves
> use), but the "To: " headers remain intact, so I can route things based
> on those.]

The main advantage to having your own domain is that you can point it at
*any* mailserver if the one you are using at present becomes defunct.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown