Default Email Address
With our shared web hosting we always configure our servers to refuse to accept email for unknown addresses this means that emails sent by spammers to random addresses are rejected and never delivered thus reducing the amount of spam users have to deal with.
However it appears not all web hosts do this and instead deliver all emails to unknown addresses to the accounts default mailbox. This either results in the user having to wade through hundreds of junk emails and delete them or if the account owner doesn’t check the default mailbox then it can result in the account running out of disk space which then depending on the server configuration could mean that no legitimate emails can be delivered.
The following describes how to disable the catch all address within cPanel and assume you are using the latest x3 theme, for other control panels you will need to consult the relevant documentation:
- Login to your cPanel account
- Click the Default Address icon
- Select the Discard with error to sender (at SMTP time) option
- The default failure message is No such person at this address and can be left as that
- Click Change
If all goes well only email sent to email addresses that have be explicitly created will be delivered, you can check what those addresses are under the Email Accounts and Forwarders options within cPanel.
All that is left to do now is to remove existing spam, this can be done via the Webmail option simply login with the same username and password that you use to login to cPanel, after that the inbox should show all the junk mail collected in the default address which can then be deleted, just remember to purge the trashcan before you exit webmail or the junk may still be left on your account.
