Default Email Address

You may notice an email address in your GreenGeeks account called “Default.” That email account is automatically created when your cPanel user is created.

default email account

On some systems, a default email address acts as a “catch-all.” That means any email addressed to the domain for a non-existent email user winds up in the default email box.

That’s not the case at GreenGeeks. We do not support “catch-all” email accounts.

Why Doesn’t GreenGeeks Allow “Catch-All” Email Accounts?

The one-word answer: spam.

Spammers will often use large lists of common usernames to spam a domain and see if they can find any valid users. If there is a catch-all email account on a domain, spammers won’t see any bounces, so they’ll assume all the users they sent to are valid and continue to flood the domain with spam for non-existent users.

On the other hand, if an email is returned or refused, spammers usually remove that address from their lists. If they get enough bounces from a domain, they may even remove it from their lists entirely.

So not allowing catch-all addresses ultimately reduces the amount of spam sent to a mail server. Reducing the spam activity increases performance for all the legitimate emails passing through the server.

So What Does the GreenGeeks “Default” Email Account Do?

The account returns an error message to the sender, notifying them that the email account doesn’t exist.

In addition to being an excellent anti-spam measure, it also lets legitimate senders know their message wasn’t delivered. They can then check for typos or other mistakes in the address.

2 thoughts on “Default Email Address”

  1. Please update this article. The tool for “Default Address” no longer exists in GreenGeeks cPanel. I would like to forward all email accounts’ incoming emails from my domain to one email address. Can you please help me figure this out?

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