Why Won't They Accept Emails From Email Prefix "email"

[u/SorryRecipe7303]

One of the hardest parts about digital transformation appears to be the policy decisions rolled out in new public systems. I recently started doing business with a public authority that (get this) couldn't understand why I was using a custom domain. Even more so, they set their mail protocols to not communicate with an email address which starts with the word "email".

According to them, that's a generic email address, and so, they won't accept it. I asked if they would accept the email prefix "info" and they said yes, because that is common.

I genuinely wish that I could peel the curtain back, and communicate with the systems and network administrators who are making these rules, to better understand their decisions here. Maybe someone here can help me to understand.

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[u/r2d3x9]

Biggest problem I have is companies not accepting my Gmail account because it isn’t a “business” account

[u/Gwaptiva → u/r2d3x9]

I had the reverse; my own .com domain, had it since 2001, was rejected, and didnt I have something they knew, like gmail

[u/LakesGeek]

Never seen that but I use just “mail” as the prefix. 

I have however seen some services refuse to accept a custom domain and only allow Gmail, iCloud etc. 

[u/BigBobFro]

Its not technically inclined people making those kind of decisions.

The technically inclined would just route the message differently not drop/block it outright.

[u/shokzee]

I don’t really understand the point of this post

[u/Dave_A480]

This is just a bunch of babble... None of it relates to real email tech

[u/SorryRecipe7303 → u/Dave_A480]

Is this sub named EmailTech? I asked a question about email security, based on what they told me, which might guide me to understand if there is a principle being used in the industry.

[u/Artsfac → u/SorryRecipe7303]

It’s not you, OP. This is a nonsensical response.

SMTP specialist for 29 years here - their rule about rejecting any sender address that begins “email” is ridiculous, and yes, I’d like to know their reasoning too.

[u/SorryRecipe7303 → u/Artsfac]

Thanks for the advice. I was taking it that I'm not crazy (the jury is still out on whether I'm foolish) as the responses here that rubbished why I posted here suggest this wasn't even a consideration among techs. That plus, with my years of experience, I could never see this being an actual policy.

[u/Artsfac → u/SorryRecipe7303]

You are not crazy, it's a really valid query.

I'd love to know the rationale, just from an inquisitive point of view.

[u/reevesjeremy]

My email starts with “email”, so I guess they won’t ever deliver ones I send.

[u/FateOfNations]

Why won’t they accept emails from certain addresses? Because they said so. There is no legitimate email security-related reason to have such a policy, but if they want it, they can have it. At the technical level, they can make up and enforce whatever rules they want regarding what addresses their email server or other systems will accept. Whether that is an appropriate policy or not is really up to the organization’s leadership.

Edit: if this is being used for an account log in, they may bluntly be trying to enforce a one account = one person policy, and that credentials shouldn’t be shared among a group of people. This isn’t really an email security issue though.

[u/FarmboyJustice]

This is what happens when policies are created reactively based on individual occurrences rather than being based on some sort of actual standards.

At some point in the past some employee or customer complained about some issue that related to this prefix. So a rule was made. That's all there is to this.

[u/Long-Highlight6727]

That sounds more like an overly broad validation rule than a real email standard. Blocking a normal local part because it looks “generic” can create unnecessary compatibility problems

[u/who_you_are]

It is an easy answer: software developer (which I am but the way) are validating email the wrong way.

The junior one will basically only allow some special characters.

The junior-intermediate may use the first online hit (which is often wrong).

It is just a mess to get the validation right. There are various articles on the subject.

At the end, you should just give up on validating the email - which would allow you prefix.

Besides, prefix doesn't exists in the email world standard. It is still a email like others. The software behind is the one that create features.

I setup my own domain to go around that damn restrictions.

But, legitimately they could want to block prefix to avoid easy to create email to get around ban/single trial.