Do I really need an MX record? (for e-mail to work)

sm5w2 at hotmail.com sm5w2 at hotmail.com
Wed Dec 21 04:50:57 UTC 2005


Because of a recent change to our internet connection, I discovered
that our MX record has been essentially non-existant for the past 2 or
3 weeks.  Our A record is fine.

It's easy enough to configure our MX record, but I'm reluctant to do so
because:

1) We are getting e-mail, and there is no indication that anyone trying
to send us e-mail is encountering any difficulty

2) The lack of an MX record seems to result in a fall-back to the A
record (which explains why we are getting e-mail).

3) I've noticed a huge reduction in the amount of "zombie" or trojan
spam being received by several of our well known addresses.

Because of all three of the above (especially item 3) I think I'll be
letting this experiment go a while longer and see if not having an MX
record turns out to be a great way to prevent spam from finding us.

Anyone care to comment?

ps:  There seems to be no SMTP-specific newsgroup for talking about the
benefits and pitfalls of not having an MX record (and no, NANAE does
not seem relavent).  Are there any web forums for SMTP discussions?



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