Do I HAVE to use a catch all?

[bennerstul]

I thought I used to be able to disable the catchall account, and bounce emails not sent to an existing address.... I have TONS of spam coming to me because they use my address as a return-to addy, so I get all the 'undeliverable mail' coming in, and spamassassin is NOT good at rejecting these... plus I sometimes may get a real one, so can't delete them with procmail or similar.... I could just let them build up, but I am not worried about catching wrong addresses, and I don't want to have to clean 20 boxes each month.... Any help is appreciated!

[midwest]

blackhole will trash mails sent to non-existing addresses. If you instead wish tomcompletely reject mail to the default account then use fail. The correct syntax is :blackhole: or :fail:

[bennerstul]

Thanks for the reply... so are you saying I need to set up a forwarder, and use :fail: as the forward-to address? 'Cause I don't see any other way to do this...

edit: just tried it and did not work... how hard can this be?

[midwest]

Go onto your cpanel and click the email icon and then click the "default address" link. In the box by your domain name enter either :fail: or :blackhole:

[neumannu47]

Originally Posted by midwest

blackhole will trash mails sent to non-existing addresses. If you instead wish tomcompletely reject mail to the default account then use fail. The correct syntax is :blackhole: or :fail:

Ron, are you sure that this information is correct? I used to use the default email address as a regular email account. However, recently, the default account is not working.

Before:
anything@domain.com - :fail: or :blackhole: - shows up
default@domain.com - email shows up like a regular email account

After:
Cannot get mail to show up in the default account.

Also note that I went through the automatic email setup for Outlook Express with the default account, and not only did the account never show up in OE (even though it was closed when I merge the registry file), manually entering the .reg data did not cause the pop account to start working.

It seems that something has changed, probably with cPanel.

Also, I tried to use "anything" and "anything@domain.com" for SMTP authentication, and it would not work. I had to create support@domain.com to get authentication to work.

Any input appreciated.

[allendick]

Go to cPanel, then "Mail", then "Default Address", then "Set default Address".

Make sure the in the domain after "Send all unrouted mail for" is correct, then fill in the next box (after "to:") with either ":blackhole: or ":fail:" or the email address to which you want unrouted mail sent. Then press the"Change" button.

(I find that a Gmail address works well, for filtering, since their SPAM filters are pretty good, but :blackhole: is best if you are sure you never want to see anything that arrives there).

I'm not sure what you are doing with

anything@domain.com and default@domain.com

but, these are AFAIK not what we refer to as default addresses--unless your domain is something like default.ca or anything.com and therefore your username is "default" or "anything".

The default account is of the form: your_username@your_domain.com

allen

[edwurster]

What you see in default address depends on the CPANEL version and skin.

With rvskin, go to Email Management > Default Email Account > Set Default Address.

The default is already set to your main account. Put in :blackhole: and click the change button.

You see a message "All unrouted mail for domain.com is now going to: :blackhole: Warning! the defaultaddress feature has been disabled! "

If you click Go Back, the original default address appears. Same with the menu link on left side. So, as has been pointed out in another thread, the feature appears not to work. The Warning is literal, IOW, all unrouted mail will still go to your default account.

This may depend on your server.

Neumannu47 problem is a little different, i.e. his default does not work. Try resetting the password for the account. Also, use the webmail interface out of CPANEL to check the account. This will tell you if the problem is the account, or Lookout.

[neumannu47]

The confusion is not just here. The problem is asked in many places but not correctly answered. The most relevant answer I have found is that the problem is a bug in cPanel, but I have no way of knowing. Let me try again.

Hypothetical domain: domainname.com
User name for hypothetical domain: uname

When the new domainname.com account is set up on the server, and with uname selected as the user name, a default email address is automatically created: uname@domainname.com. However, unlike any other email address on this domain, this email account can be accessed through webmail with "uname" as the login, not "uname@domainname.com". Therefore, it is a different type of email account.

Since "uname" is the default account, it is capable of receiving TWO types of email: routed and unrouted. Just for clarity, if I create an email account, say edwurster@domainname.com, all email sent to edwurster@domainname.com will appear in that email box because it is routed to an existing email account. Email sent to edwurster2006@domainname.com will not be routed to edwurster@domainname.com; it becomes unrouted email.

uname@domainname.com --> routed email (to the default account)
edwurster2006@domainname.com --> unrouted email (no corresponding email account)

There are three options for unrouted email:
1. It can be delivered to the default account, uname@domainname.com.
2. It can disappear (:blackhole: - not recommended)
3. It can be bounced (:fail:)

With either 2 or 3, the unrouted email never gets into the default email account.

My question has nothing to do with UNROUTED email. My question has only to do with ROUTED email intended for the default account. In this example, routed email consists only of email sent directly to uname@domainname.com.

Six months ago, if I set unrouted email to :fail: or :blackhole:, all unrouted email would be bounced or disappear, as expected. Email sent directly to uname@domainname.com would appear in the uname inbox. Now, however, after I deleted an account and recreated it, without regard for the UNROUTED setting (that is, whether I use :fail: or :blackhole:), email sent directly to uname@domainname.com (routed email) never shows up in the uname inbox. I can log into webmail and send email from uname, but an email message sent directly to uname@domainname.com never shows up. It disappears into the ether.

Something appears to have changed, and I don't know a proper solution. I am not sure about this, but if I configure the default email address to either "uname" or "uname@domainname.com", that account will start receiving all routed and UNROUTED email, which is not what I want. I want to received routed email in the default account that is intended for the default account.

In summary, the question is this: How can I cause the default account to receive ROUTED email while continued to ignore or bounce UNROUTED email? Be aware that if you have not tested this function lately, your answer may be incorrect, if something really has changed.

Thanks!

[edwurster]

Originally Posted by neumannu47

In summary, the question is this: How can I cause the default account to receive ROUTED email while continued to ignore or bounce UNROUTED email? Be aware that if you have not tested this function lately, your answer may be incorrect, if something really has changed.

The default address feature is disabled on my server. I can't say whether that applies to your server. I tested this on root10 account.

I also know that close to 100% of the spam and returned bounces and spoofs is being filtered by the server before it reaches my default accounts.

I believe that the way things are going, bounces are not preferred, as they cause the sending domain to blacklist servers here.

[neumannu47]

Originally Posted by edwurster

The default address feature is disabled on my server. I can't say whether that applies to your server. I tested this on root10 account.

I'm on wwwroot20.net. How did you disable the default address for ROUTED email? A lot of bounces go to the routed account, when it works.

I also know that close to 100% of the spam and returned bounces and spoofs is being filtered by the server before it reaches my default accounts.

Again, how? Did you configure the server to do so?

I believe that the way things are going, bounces are not preferred, as they cause the sending domain to blacklist servers here.

I undertand your comment, but I was just relaying what I read on cPanel's forum.

[edwurster]

Originally Posted by neumannu47

I'm on wwwroot20.net. How did you disable the default address for ROUTED email? A lot of bounces go to the routed account, when it works.

The error message I posted was literal, but I think it is incorrect as stated. IOW, you cannot change the default to blackhole or fail. At least I can't on server 10.

My default address isn't disabled, and it works. I sent mail to a fictitious address, and it goes to my default account. I check that through webmail.

I used to get a lot of bounces to my default account. After the move to a new server, I get none.

[mokume]

I'm getting massive amounts of spam coming in via the catchall that then goes to the default address which I do not use. This is happening on several domains. I used to have these all set to :blackhole: but that must have been reset at some point. I'm on root10 and cannot make changes to the default address now. Why is that?

This will require a ton of additional work on my part to constantly ftp in and remove disk space hogging spam that SHOULD be blackholed.

Why has the ability to make changes to the dafault address been removed from root10?

[edwurster]

Originally Posted by mokume

I'm getting massive amounts of spam coming in via the catchall that then goes to the default address which I do not use. This is happening on several domains. I used to have these all set to :blackhole: but that must have been reset at some point. I'm on root10 and cannot make changes to the default address now. Why is that?

This will require a ton of additional work on my part to constantly ftp in and remove disk space hogging spam that SHOULD be blackholed.

Why has the ability to make changes to the dafault address been removed from root10?

I hope there is a way for that to change too. But for now that is the way things are set up on several servers, and maybe all eventually. Withough input from Jim about it, I don't want to speculate about it. I can understand why the bounce was eliminated, but the blackhole was a necessity. However, how can you allow a feature, but not all commands? That is the dilemma.

What I've done:

1. Make an email account for one unrouted name that gets a lot of mail. Then I created a mail filter that discards all mail to it.

2. Turned on spam assassin for the default account, and regulary download it. My mail client takes care of the rest.

I'm not sure if a mail filter for the default address will work in eliminating all mail that goes to it. Maybe someone has that answer. I'm sure there are other ideas out there too.