Restrictions on Mail Forwarding

The restrictions below apply only to automatic forwarding. They do not apply to your decision to pass along an individual email message to one or more of your correspondents using your mail client.

Panix offers several different options for forwarding mail. Because indiscriminate forwarding implicates our servers in the spread of spam and virus/worm mail, we require spam blocking and virus protection whenever mail from Panix is forwarded to another site. (Virus checking can be implemented via webmail or via procmail.)

Panix may also institute blocking on an account in response to spam complaints.

The following restrictions apply

Mail forwarding from your Panix account

If you set your Panix mailbox to forward mail to an account on another site, we require that you turn on at least the default set of spam blocks (currently the Zen blacklist and Sender Address Verification), Panix's anti-virus filter, and SpamAssassin.

Using the vacation program or a custom auto-responder

If you use a vacation program, or have your own software that replies to incoming mail, you must turn on the default set of spam blocks, anti-virus filtering, and SpamAssassin. When a vacation program or auto-responder sends mail to a forged return address, it becomes unwanted mail at that site, and many sites consider such "backscatter" to be just as bad as spam.

Mail aliases that forward to your Panix mailbox

An alias address that delivers to a single Panix mailbox will use the spam-blocking settings of that mailbox. Note that the default is currently to enable the ZEN and Sender Address Verification blocks. If you prefer the minimum spam blocking, we suggest that you turn on Bogus MX. If you absolutely require no blocking at all for your alias(es), please write to us and we'll unset this for you

Please note that an alias that forwards off-site, or to multiple destinations, will receive Panix's default spam blocking settings.

Mail aliases that forward to other sites

All aliases that forward mail to off-site addresses or to multiple users will be configured to use the Zen blacklist and Sender Address Verification. Panix may also add additional spam blocking at our discretion to protect our network if these blocks are not sufficient.

Wildcard domains and forwarding

Wildcard domains (where all email addresses @some.domain are accepted and forwarded into a single "general info" mailbox) are frequently targeted by spammers. The spammers' automated attempts to harvest new mail addresses may perform "dictionary attacks" where they test tens of thousands of addresses on a domain to see which ones are deliverable. They are also fond of using wildcard domains as a source of forged return addresses. In either case, the result is thousands and thousands of unwanted emails in your inbox. We thus do not recommend that you forward wildcard domains off-site, and we may withdraw this feature in the future.
If you ask Panix to forward mail for a wildcard domain off-site, we will install maximal spam blocking as necessary to protect our network. If this does not meet your needs, we invite you to use a local Panix mailbox instead.

Supposing the address yourname@yourdomain (hosted at Panix) forwards to you@someplace_else. Any spam that comes to yourname@yourdomain will be forwarded to the server that handles the mail for someplace_else-- and it will come from Panix's servers. That means that any complaints about that spam will reflect on Panix's servers, even though it didn't originate here and passed through our server only because of the alias.

This can cause our servers to be blacklisted. When that happens, it interferes with the delivery of other customers' mail to correspondents at other domains.

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