Emails from or to addresses with a leading dash (-) in the address are rejected

Products

• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

Messaging Gateway (SMG) Message Audit Logs (MAL) show messages from senders with a leading dash in the email address are rejected:

• SMG rejects email messages from senders with a leading dash in the user part of the email address

  mail from: [email protected]
  501 5.1.7 MAIL FROM: -user syntax error (minus sign -) not allowed
  Connection closed by foreign host.

• SMG rejects recipients which have a leading dash in the user part of the email address

  mail from: [email protected]
  250 2.0.0 MAIL FROM accepted
  rcpt to: [email protected]
  501 5.1.3 RCPT TO: -user syntax error (minus sign -) not allowed

Cause

In its default configuration, SMG does not accept a leading dash in the user part of email addresses. 

Resolution

This can be addressed by explicitly allowing email addresses with a leading dash character

1. Log into the SMG Control Center as an admin 
2. Go to Protocols > Settings
3. Enable Allow email addresses to start with a dash
   
4. Click `Save`