Apostrophe in email address

[molecul3]

Hi all,

We seem to encounter issues receiving incoming emails from senders who have an apostophe in their email address. e.g. shaq.o'neil@bla.com. Exchange would reject the email stating a mailbox name not allowed error. Is there a setting in exchange that can be tweaked to allow for these emails to be passed through? Please advise.

 

[ntinlin]

I 'believe' Exchange per se has no problem with apostrophes since they are allowed under the RFC's.

Could be a spam filter, firewall or similar doesn't like them though.
Hate to quote another site but see:-

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid43_gci1009952,00.html

(Site might require signup, I can't remember)

The error message is being sent back to the sender?
Presumably an Error 553: Mailbox name not allowed


Neill

 

[molecul3]

Hi ntinlin,

Thank you for your reply. That was a very interesting article. I am unsure whether or not the error message was sent back to the sender, but the error is a 553 error. I am viewing this from our spam filter. The spam filter vendor claims that there is no security setting which rejects emails with apostrophes and that it was rejected by our exchange server as specified by the error message

"Connected to 10.0.0.1 but sender was rejected/Remote host said: 553 Requested action not taken: mailbox name not allowed or chunk too large".

It has to be the mailbox error as the size was only 60kb.
This has happened before and I have asked the other side to fix up this address but as it is happening on a more regular basis now, you know what users are bound to say, "it works for all other people i send to, so your system is the problem" Hah!

 

[ntinlin]

I found another article that suggested specific firewalls like Watchguards had default rules that played havoc with RFC821 compliance.

I'm presuming that they strip out the apostrophe and leave a space or put a different character in its place that isn't allowed.

One way to check if you don't use SPF checking or similar is to telnet to your XC servers SMTP port from inside network and attempt to send a message from the e-mail address that is having a problem.
If XC accepts it then you know the problem lies elsewhere.


Neill

 

[molecul3]

Hi Neil,

Would you happen to have the article that mentioned this?
We happen to have a Watchguard. How do I conduct the test you were talking about or what would be the fix for the Watchguard? Thanks Neil.

 

[ntinlin]

I don't have it handy but the Google search term I used was apostrophe in email address exchange.

Don't remember if it had a fix or just mentioned it as a problem.

Neill

 

[xmsre]

It's the incoming SMTP policy on watchguard. You need to add an apostrophe. See

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1430311&page=1

 

[molecul3]

Hi xmsre,

Yes, I was doing a bit of searching around and saw that post. That was very helpful. Thanks for your post as well. I have included that into the SMTP policy and am waiting for a test email back. FIngers crossed.