Catchall Forwarding
No longer Allowed At Cornerhost
In order to help prevent cornerhost's servers from blacklisting by ISPs and other organizations, I'm no longer allowing forwarding of catchall addresses.
Catchalls are the rules that tell the email server what to do when someone sends mail to an arbitrary address that doesn't have an explicit rule of its own.
Spammers will often try out random addresses at your domain. Addresses that don't bounce will wind up on their lists.
Sadly, many ISPs make no distinction between forwarding spam and sending spam, and catchall forwarding results in frequent blacklisting of the cornerhost servers, so it is no longer allowed.
You may still create rules to forward specific addresses. The new policy only deals with catchalls.
Existing Catchall Forwards
Will Expire On July 7
I've already updated the control panel to reflect the new policy.
Any catchall forwards left on the morning of July 7 will be disabled and redirected to your main cornerhost mailbox.
Please log in at http://cornerhost.net/ as soon as possible and update your rules.
Even if you don't forward your catchall rule, you should still consider turning it off and only accepting mail for addresses you actually use. This will almost certainly cut down on the amount of spam you receive.
The Default Catchall Rule
Is Now "Bounce"
I have also changed the default catchall rule from "go into your main cornerhost mailbox" to "bounce".
This it to cut down on the amount of spam you receive.
From now on, when you add a new domain (or set up a new account) you will have to configure your mail rules before you start receiving mail. (I've added a reminder to the "domain added" message in the control panel.)
Again, this part only affects new domains.
An Alternative for Gmail/Yahoo
If you happen to be forwarding all your mail to Gmail or Yahoo, a better alternative is to store the mail here, and then have them check the box. Instructions are here:
CheckMailFromGmail
CheckMailFromYahoo
(As far as I can tell, this isn't possible with Hotmail. Sorry.)
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please let me know.
