Difference between revisions of "Can I create a catch-all email address?"
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| − | + | 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. | |
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| + | [1] Login to your cPanel and [[Creating an Email Account|create an email account]] for the address you would like to act like a catch-all. | ||
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| + | For example, you might create the email account "[email protected]" | ||
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| + | [2] [[Adding an Email Forwarder|Create multiple email forwarders]] for other email addresses to be forwarded to your [email protected] email account. | ||
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| + | Example: | ||
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| + | sales@example.com -> catchall@example.com | ||
| + | billing@example.com -> catchall@example.com | ||
| + | support@example.com -> catchall@example.com | ||
| + | etc... | ||
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| + | [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]. | ||
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| + | 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 | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | ... | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | [[Category:Technical Support FAQ]] | ||
Latest revision as of 20:17, 3 October 2012
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 for the address you would like to act like a catch-all.
For example, you might create the email account "[email protected]"
[2] Create multiple email forwarders for other email addresses to be forwarded to your [email protected] email account.
Example:
[email protected] -> [email protected] [email protected] -> [email protected] [email protected] -> [email protected] 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:
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ... [email protected]
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.
