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Funnel any email for a domain to another in Webstar Apps
In WebSTAR 4.x, I could have all email from a domain (ex: funnel.com), no matter what the username was, forward to a master user (ex: tigerkr@regular.com) in another domain. This way, I could have an infinite number of email addresses that I didn't have to manually (or automatically for that matter) set up. All the email addresses would be delivered to the same account (in the other domain), all the while keeping the "to" address information. I really, really needed to get this working in WebSTAR 5.x, because the server was blocking all of those emails. Since there wasn't an established user for the emails being sent in that domain, the emails were getting bounced. A call to the very friendly 4D tech support yielded much fruit. Here's how it works:

You set up two post offices. One post office will contain your regular duty domain (ex: regular.com). The other post office will contain your funneling domain (ex: funnel.com). Then you would set up an account for the regular.com post office (ex: tigerkr@regular.com), and a 'special account' for the funnel.com post office. The username for the special account is "...", without the quotes (ex: ...@funnel.com). The "..." means: collect all email sent to unknown users at this domain. Since there are no real users, all email sent to this domain would get put into this "..." account. Then you simply set the "..." account to automatically forward to the real account at the other domain in the other post office (ex: tigerkr@regular.com).

So when you check the tigerkr@regular.com account, you'll see all the emails that were sent to the funnel.com domain, regardless of what was in front of the "@" sign. So in effect, you've funneled any possible email sent to the funnel.com domain to the account tigerkr@regular.com. This could also work for one domain and post office, where you have your established user in the same domain (ex: tigerkr@funnel.com), and all of the other possible usernames for that domain are funneled into the established account.

Why would you want to do this? Because when you give out an email address to a company, say amazon.com, you give them this email address: amazon.com@funnel.com. When you check the tigerkr@regular.com account, if amazon has sent you an email, the "to" field will still be amazon.com@funnel.com. So you can easily track who's emailing you. And more importantly, you can track who's giving away the email address to spammers!
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Funnel any email for a domain to another in Webstar | 5 comments | Create New Account
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Funnel any email for a domain to another in Webstar
Authored by: uigui on Apr 07, '03 12:15:22PM

i use an alternative to this. i have a subdomain of my real domain. something like name.domain.org and have all mail sent to anything@name.domain.org delivered to my mailbox. this way, each user on the domain can have a subdomain to catch their mail. same concept, a little easier to duplicate and requires only one domain.



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Funnel any email for a domain to another in Webstar
Authored by: mcroft on Apr 07, '03 01:28:33PM

There are religious debates about this on mail server lists all the time. The main arguments against are:

1: It is a violation of the applicable RFCs
2: You will appear to spam testers as an open relay and get blacklisted
3: You'll increase your spam dramatically.

Nevertheless, people certainly do set up blanket accounts. Certainly many mail server apps allow for it.



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Funnel any email for a domain to another in Webstar
Authored by: uigui on Apr 07, '03 01:58:33PM

could you expand on points 1 and 2?



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Funnel any email for a domain to another in Webstar
Authored by: TigerKR on Apr 08, '03 01:41:24AM

Yes, please explain why?

I do not have an open relay at all. In fact, my smtp server uses a password authentication scheme - aka only my users can use my smtp server to send email out from my smtp server.

I have an open domain, that anyone can email, but I don't see how that will get me onto a blacklist. Why should anti-spammers care that I will accept any email sent to my domain?

I'm creating a domain funnel. All INCOMING email to that domain gets funneled to one account. I have no idea where you see that as an activity of spamming especially since there is nothing OUTGOING with what I'm describing. Spamming involved a LOT of outgoing.



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Funnel any email for a domain to another in Webstar
Authored by: TigerKR on Apr 08, '03 01:44:06AM

heh.. stupid typo - that should be "spamming involves a LOT of outgoing." I am not a spammer and I never have been (nor will be) :)



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