What would you do about questionable domain pointing A record to your IP address?

Fri Feb 20 17:08:02 UTC 2015

All,

We have a rather strange situation (well, strange to me, at least).

We have an email reputation accreditation applicant, who otherwise looks clean, however there is a very strange and somewhat concerning domain being pointed to one of the applicant's IP addresses  Let's call the domain example.com, and the IP address 127.0.0.1, for these purposes.

Applicant is assigned 127.0.0.1.  the rDNS correctly goes to their own domain.

However, example.com (which in reality is a concerning domain name) claims 127.0.0.1 as their A record. 

Of course, example.com is registered privately, and their DNS provider is one who is...umm... "known to provide dns for domains seen in spam."

As I see it, the applicant's options are:

a) just not worry about it and keep an eye on it

b) publish a really tight spf record on it, so if they are somehow compromised, email appearing to come from example.com and 127.0.0.1 should be denied

c) not use the IP address at all (it's part of a substantially larger block)

d) two or more of the above.

Thoughts?  What would you do?

Thanks!

Anne

Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.
CEO/President
ISIPP SuretyMail Email Reputation, Accreditation & Certification
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Author: Section 6 of the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
Member, California Bar Cyberspace Law Committee
Ret. Professor of Law, Lincoln Law School of San Jose
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