A mail exchanger record (MX record) is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System that specifies a mail server responsible for accepting email messages on behalf of a recipient's domain, and a preference value used to prioritize mail delivery if multiple mail servers are available. The set of MX records of a domain name specifies how email should be routed with the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
The characteristic payload information of an MX record is the fully qualified domain name of a mail host and a preference value. The host name must map directly to one or more address record (A, or AAAA) in the DNS, and must not point to any CNAME records.
When an e-mail message is sent through the Internet, the sending mail transfer agent (MTA) queries the Domain Name System for MX records of each recipient's domain name. This query returns a list of host names of mail exchange servers accepting incoming mail for that domain and their preferences. The sending agent then attempts to establish an SMTP connection.
The MX mechanism provides the ability to run multiple mail servers for a single domain, and allows administrators to specify an order in which they should be tried.
A favorite technique of spammers is to connect to the backup (high distance) MX servers for a domain first in order to avoid any anti-spam filters that may be running on the primary (lowest distance/highest preference) MX. Backup MX servers often have different anti-spam techniques, and using them can hide the spammer's IP address from the primary MX servers. This can be foiled by using bogus high-distance MX servers.
Alternatively, sometimes spammers only target the lowest-distance MX records for domains, and do not fall back to higher-distance MX records when the lowest-distance MX records are unreachable. A technique called nolisting will defeat this behavior.