View source for Can I create a catch-all email address?

Catch-all email addresses are disabled by default on all of our shared servers because of the large amount of spam they tend to receive. You can emulate catch-all functionality by setting up email forwarders to catch all normally unrouted mail.


[1] Login to your cPanel and [create an email account|Creating an Email Account] for the address you would like to act like a catch-all.  

For example, you might create the email account "catchall@example.com"

[2] [Create multiple email forwarders|Adding an Email Forwarder] for other email addresses to be forwarded to your master@yourdomain.com email account.

Example:

sales@example.com -> catchall@example.com
billing@example.com -> catchall@example.com
support@example.com -> catchall@example.com
etc...

[3] To check your email, login using the credentials of the email account you created above in [1].  This account will receive email sent to any of the addresses you configured as forwarders in [2].  

Using this method, you can setup a single email account to catch mail sent to various other addresses.  The benefit of this method is that you are not catching unwanted mail sent to bogus email addresses.  It's a common practice of spammers to try "Dictionary Attacks" against a wide variety of email addresses.  A spammer might use a dictionary of common email addresses and attempt to deliver spam to them.  You'll commonly see spammers send spam to:

adam@example.com
alex@example.com
amanda@example.com
bradley@example.com
brian@example.com
...
zeus@example.com

and so on.  If you have a true catch-all email address setup, you would receive mail sent to any of these email addresses even though there is no mailbox or forwarder configured for them.  By limiting your catch-all to only those forwarders you setup, you can still receive mail from multiple email addresses in a single location without receiving the spam sent to dictionary style lists.

[[Category:Technical Support FAQ]]