Some Way To Change Default Email Address?

[jesse]

The default email account username is the same name of the cpanel login. Is there any way to change that? (For security, and to avoid future spam.) Thanks.

EDIT

 

Well, I think I found my own answer buried in the cpanel docs:

 

You cannot rename, delete, or place a quota on the default account. We recommend that you create a separate email account for daily use.

 

So... what good is this email account? Its only use seems to be to hold undesired spam, and there's no way to set a quota. Probably an artifact from a different era? I'd be interested to know the best solution for this.

Edited January 17, 2017 by jesse

[wolstech]

It's mostly there for logs and internal results reporting. Cron output (and IIRC metrics reports if you turn them on) are sent to it for instance, so if you wish to see these, this mailbox is where you look.

 

Other than that, yeah, it mostly collects spam. I have 3 spam emails and 45 messages full of cron results in mine right now.

 

If you're really worried about it, you can probably code a script that connects the mailbox and deletes all the mail. I never had to empty mine in the 5 years I had a Stevie account, so it's unlikely to ever hog a massive amount of space. My Tommy account has 48 emails in there currently.

[jesse]

It's mostly there for logs and internal results reporting. Cron output (and IIRC metrics reports if you turn them on) are sent to it for instance, so if you wish to see these, this mailbox is where you look.

 

Other than that, yeah, it mostly collects spam. I have 3 spam emails and 45 messages full of cron results in mine right now.

 

If you're really worried about it, you can probably code a script that connects the mailbox and deletes all the mail.

That sounds potentially useful, but it means I can't just ignore all email sent to the address either. Argggggg

I wanted to set a filter with "Fail with Message" action. Is there a list of addresses I can whitelist on the account from cron et al?

 

I never had to empty mine in the 5 years I had a Stevie account, so it's unlikely to ever hog a massive amount of space. My Tommy account has 48 emails in there currently.

So I assume the emails in that account count towards the overall server disk quota just like any other email account?

The reason why I'm worried about spam is because I'm hoping to explode on social media eventually.

[wolstech]

 

I never had to empty mine in the 5 years I had a Stevie account, so it's unlikely to ever hog a massive amount of space. My Tommy account has 48 emails in there currently.

So I assume the emails in that account count towards the overall server disk quota just like any other email account?

The reason why I'm worried about spam is because I'm hoping to explode on social media eventually.

 

 

They do. On cPanel systems, mail is just another file. Take a look in <homedir>/mail/cur/. You'll see a bunch of really strangely named files that each represent a single email. As long as you don't give out that email address, which is typically in the form cpanel_username@tommy.heliohost.org, you should be fine. Nobody uses the default account, and cP recommends you don't for exactly this reason.

 

All the domains that regular people will actually visit/send mail to (such as your main domain) don't have any default accounts, and can be fully managed through cPanel. If you don't want any email to be accepted, just don't create an account or forwarder. The server will reject mail sent to non-existent recipients.

 

If spam does become an issue down the road, we have SpamAssassin available too.

[Krydos]

The default email account username is the same name of the cpanel login. Is there any way to change that?

Long version:

These default mail accounts actually predate the internet itself. Even at the beginning of computing in the early 70s unix was designed to be a multi-user system, and before computers could even really communicate with each other users on these old systems could send messages to each other. Bob might send Steve a message "Hey, I installed pine!" and the next time Steve logged in the command line would tell him that he had mail. Eventually clever people began forming networks of computers and the internet rolled into existence. Mail from these early computers was adapted to not only be able to send mail locally, as it had originally been designed on the same physical machine, but send the mails out over the network to another computer.

 

TLDR:

The default mail address is part of linux not cpanel.

[jesse]

 

 

I never had to empty mine in the 5 years I had a Stevie account, so it's unlikely to ever hog a massive amount of space. My Tommy account has 48 emails in there currently.

So I assume the emails in that account count towards the overall server disk quota just like any other email account?

The reason why I'm worried about spam is because I'm hoping to explode on social media eventually.

 

They do. On cPanel systems, mail is just another file. Take a look in <homedir>/mail/cur/. You'll see a bunch of really strangely named files that each represent a single email. As long as you don't give out that email address, which is typically in the form cpanel_username@tommy.heliohost.org, you should be fine. Nobody uses the default account, and cP recommends you don't for exactly this reason.

 

The problem is my cpanel username is very short, simple, and somewhat common. I shouldn't have picked one so simple when I created the account, but I didn't know I'd have an open email address with the same name afterwards. I'm assuming it's very difficult to change the account username since there's no option for it in the UI.

 

All the domains that regular people will actually visit/send mail to (such as your main domain) don't have any default accounts, and can be fully managed through cPanel. If you don't want any email to be accepted, just don't create an account or forwarder. The server will reject mail sent to non-existent recipients.

 

If spam does become an issue down the road, we have SpamAssassin available too.

Yeah, I saw those options. Grateful for SA.

 

 

 

The default email account username is the same name of the cpanel login. Is there any way to change that?

Long version:

These default mail accounts actually predate the internet itself. Even at the beginning of computing in the early 70s unix was designed to be a multi-user system, and before computers could even really communicate with each other users on these old systems could send messages to each other. Bob might send Steve a message "Hey, I installed pine!" and the next time Steve logged in the command line would tell him that he had mail. Eventually clever people began forming networks of computers and the internet rolled into existence. Mail from these early computers was adapted to not only be able to send mail locally, as it had originally been designed on the same physical machine, but send the mails out over the network to another computer.

 

TLDR:

The default mail address is part of linux not cpanel.

 

 

OH, now it all makes sense. So you'd have to change my linux account name. Has it been attempted before w/having cpanel installed? Did it break all the things?

[Krydos]

The only way to change your username is to delete your account and create a new one.