> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.abusix.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Validate abuse@ role addresses

## **Overview**

We have been pulling and reporting to abuse@ role addresses for RIR-announced networks for 15+ years. This article covers why and how we validate abuse@ role addresses to ensure your abuse report reaches the appropriate network operator.

### **Why do we validate abuse@ role addresses?**

Over many years in our reporting effort, we regularly find non-functioning abuse@ role addresses in all the [RIR](https://abusix.com/glossary/regional-internet-registry/) [WHOIS](https://abusix.com/glossary/whois/) databases. Further investigation revealed that the number of nonfunctioning abuse@ role addresses exceeds 10% of the total abuse contact addresses. While this is unacceptable for reporting since abuse cannot be dealt with, if abuse cannot be reported, discussions with the individual POCs for [WHOIS](https://abusix.com/glossary/whois/) at [RIR](https://abusix.com/glossary/regional-internet-registry/) revealed minimal consensus on what type of validation would work and how it might be carried out and escalated.

Given this lack of a standard, we perform validation of each abuse@ role address for our Abuse ContactDB service to ensure that our [DNS](https://abusix.com/glossary/domain-name-system/) [IP](https://abusix.com/glossary/internet-protocol-address/) to Abuse Contact always returns a valid working abuse@ role address to you for a given [IP](https://abusix.com/glossary/internet-protocol-address/) address.

### **How our abuse@ role validation process works**

First, we are very careful to ensure that our validation methods are low touch and done slowly, to make sure it does not burden any abuse@ address’s mail system in any way.

The checks we perform include:

* Validating [MX](https://abusix.com/glossary/mail-exchanger/) records (e.g., does the abuse@ role address domain exist, and does it point to a valid [IP](https://abusix.com/glossary/internet-protocol-address/) address?

* Does at least one [MX](https://abusix.com/glossary/mail-exchanger/) respond to our inquiry on port 25?

* Does the mail server accept the abuse@ role address as a valid recipient?

We perform [MX](https://abusix.com/glossary/mail-exchanger/) record checks daily and valid recipient tests at most once per month except where the result is indeterminate. Domains returning SERVFAIL, connections returning [SMTP](https://abusix.com/glossary/simple-mail-transfer-protocol/) 4xx, mail servers not responding, etc., will be retried over several days and are marked as non-functional after five failed attempts.

**If an abuse contact is determined to be non-functional, then we return the abuse contact for the parent record for the network.**

### **Where we run our validation check from**

Please [whitelist](https://abusix.com/glossary/welcome-list/) 78.47.241.202 to allow our validation process to work.

All abuse@ role address validation is carried out by the [IP](https://abusix.com/glossary/internet-protocol-address/) address 78.47.241.202 ([validate.contactdb.abusix.com](http://validate.contactdb.abusix.com)) using the envelope sender address of [contactdb-validate@abusix.com](mailto:contactdb-validate@abusix.com)

### **In the future**

We are planning to add the following additional validation checks in the future

* Sending a test message to verify that the mailbox accepts messages.

* Verifying if the test message bounces or not.

* Validate if an auto-response is sent in response to the test message.

We also plan to publish non-functioning abuse@ role addresses

* as a webpage list, ordered from the largest to the smallest number of [IP](https://abusix.com/glossary/internet-protocol-address/) addresses for each of the responsible abuse contacts.

* a list of [IP](https://abusix.com/glossary/internet-protocol-address/) ranges with non-functioning abuse contacts for reputation systems.