Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions
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D. Crocker · 1997-05
Abstract
RFC 2142 specifies a set of standardized mailbox names that well-operated Internet services should maintain, including postmaster, abuse, noc, security, hostmaster, and webmaster. Operators are expected to route mail sent to these addresses to responsible humans who can act on abuse reports, technical issues, and security disclosures.
Why This RFC Matters
RFC 2142 establishes the contact conventions that the broader Internet community relies on for reporting abuse, network issues, and security vulnerabilities. The 'abuse@' mailbox in particular is mandated by many ISP acceptable-use policies and is used by spam and DDoS incident response systems. 'postmaster@' is required by SMTP standards. These well-known addresses provide a universal fallback for inter-operator communication without requiring prior contact information exchange.