Hello,

I have a customer asking if he can get a catchall email address setup at his dedicated IP. He wants anything@1.1.1.1 to go to his main address at hisdomain.com . Is this possible?

I'm using cpanel, and tried it out with a test account, however it did not work. If anyone knows how to do this, it would be great.

On the same subject... Supposing that I can do this, should I? I really can't think of any reason why the customer would need it, but can imagine it may cause a few problems (I don't know what... it just doesn't seem very "legit" to me for some reason :) )

All posts will be appreciated!

I think you are guessing right.

I smell rat:mad:

I don't see anything wrong with that? Why would it be?

We do catch-all emails for domains but not by IP address. I don't think there is a way, but I could be wrong.

I do not believe this is possible without hacking your MTA. I certainly don't know of any way to do this, nor, for that matter, do I see why one would want to. SMTP is built around the idea that emails sent to user@address should inevitably either bounce or arrive in the same mailbox; routing email to a different mailbox based on the interface on which it arrives is certainly abberant behaviour.

It can be done, but is absolutely not recommended - it reeks of spammer-like activity (even if it isn't). I think the O'Reilly Exim book has some mention of this - or maybe it was one of the Exim mailing lists I was perusing. Either way, I'd be hesitant to actually do it.

You could always say that you only recommend use of the IP until his domain name propagates, let alone for email, as IP addresses may change often. This isn't entirely untrue, as if you switched providers, the IP address would, most likely, change, but I realize you probably aren't planning on switching his in the near future.

Hey thanks for the replies everyone! I'll probably go with my gut on this one and tell him we won't do it.

Thanks!

it reeks of spammer-like activity I don't get it, could someone elighten me :)

Originally posted by RackMy.com
I don't get it, could someone elighten me :)

Why would anyone want to hide their own domain name
unless they are up to something no good.

And since this involves email, I think spamming is pretty
good guess.

Jonathan

Originally posted by RackMy.com
I don't get it, could someone elighten me :)

Basically, often what they're trying to do is have a drop box somewhere, away from their domain. That way, if someone looks through the headers of spam, it points at some other service instead of their real home. Now, this might not be what the person in this example is intending, but most hosts look at requests for IP-only accounts with some justifiable suspicion.

I get the impression, that most likely, this user probably didn't understand, or understand the difference between the domain name and IP address. I'd bet this user was just confused and didn't literally mean the IP address, but rather for the domain. Just a guess, but it's not that unreasonable to be the case. Always be sure to follow up with some question that will get you a clear and specific answer, if that's possible, and you sometimes find they meant something else, of course.

Ok, thanks for the explanation!

But, even if he uses his IP address to send out email instead of a domain name he can still be tracked down. It's not like he wants a bogus IP address. It just does not make sense to me (there really is no benefit for him as a SPAMMER as it does not hide him) and I agree with Tim that it's probably a misunderstanding on the clients part.

Yes, people should always get more information. That should be a given. I'd imagine any good host would take that as a first step.

The point, Mike, about spammers and this issue in general (not this example in particular) is this: If a spammer has their domain hosted someplace other than the IP-only account, and uses the IP-only account to send out spam, guess what gets cancelled when spam reports come in? Not the account where the domain might be. The account that shows the IP. It's a drop box, a little like a throwaway Yahoo account. They can always get another. If the host has a tiny account available, cheap, even better since the spammer doesn't have to spend a lot of money on the account and their return is that much better if anyone is silly enough to buy something advertised via spamming. As pointed out before, that's why most hosts see those types of requests as suspicious. That's also why most spam fighters like myself applaud that suspicion.