Role address
An address for a function rather than a person, such as info@, sales@, abuse@ or postmaster@, often read by several people or by software.
What it means
RFC 2142 (1997) standardises mailbox names for common services and roles. It lists business addresses (INFO, MARKETING, SALES, SUPPORT), network operations addresses (ABUSE, NOC, SECURITY) and service addresses (POSTMASTER, HOSTMASTER, WEBMASTER and others), and requires that some be valid: an organisation running an SMTP server must accept mail to postmaster, and the abuse address must work for a provider's domain.
Role addresses are risky targets for marketing: nobody personally signed them up, and several people may read them, any of whom can report the mail.
The legal view can differ: France's CNIL says generic company addresses such as info@ or contact@ belong to the legal person and are not subject to its B2B prospecting rules for individuals.
Related terms
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Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes