delivery status delivered · you were aiming for nowhere

noreply.net

is a real domain. It has DNS, an MX record, and someone paying the renewal. Mail addressed here doesn't fall into a void. It lands in an inbox, and the inbox isn't yours.

You have reached a real place

Something in your stack picked this address because it looked obviously fake. It isn't fake. It was registered years before your message showed up, and every mail your system has addressed to noreply@noreply.net has been arriving the whole time.

You didn't send that to nobody. You sent it to me.

Nothing was intercepted and nothing was broken into. Your own configuration picked the recipient, DNS did what DNS does, and a stranger got the mail.

How mail ends up here

From: noreply@noreply.nethardcoded in a mail template
SMTP_FROM=noreply@noreply.netcopied from a setup guide, never changed
deleteduser@noreply.netthe stub written when an account is removed
Reply-To:a customer answered your no-reply address
RCPT TO probesyour relay asking whether these mailboxes exist

The address you actually wanted

noreply@yourcompany.invalid
RFC 6761 · reserved · unregisterable

.invalid is set aside by RFC 6761 for exactly this. It has no registry, no owner, and no possible MX record. It does the job you assumed this domain was doing, and it will keep doing it after you stop paying attention.

example.com is not a substitute. It has live DNS and mail records, and some senders will still attempt delivery. It's meant for screenshots and documentation, not for values your production mailer will read at runtime.

What happens to mail sent here

It gets counted. This domain is part of ongoing research into how much real mail gets routed to placeholder addresses and what leaks along the way, so what matters is the volume and the shape of it: who sends, how often, what kind of data arrives by default.

If a specific message needs to be removed, write to contact@wronginbox.com

Making it stop on your end