Catch-all email addresses may no longer forward to outside mailboxes.

A lot of the reason we’re getting blocked contantly from sending email to providers like aol, comcast, etc.. it turns out is just due to forwarding-only email addresses on our system.

What happens is, people set up an email address @theirdomain hosted with us, and set it to forward to say, their aol email address. Then, they get spam @theirdomain. It forwards to aol. Aol sees it “originating” from us (when we’re just forwarding it on), and block us as spammers.

There’s not TOO much we can do about this problem, as we have to allow people to set up forwarding-only email addresses!

However, the vast majority of the spam we forward on looks like it’s from people who have catch-alls @theirdomain.

Already a while ago we stopped allowing catch-alls to forward to aol.com email addresses.. and now we’re taking it a step further and not allowing catch-alls to forward to ANY outside email address.

We’re sorry we have to do this. Catch-alls are very useful tools, but unfortunately they’re HUGE spam magnets.

Starting right now, you can no longer create catch-alls that point to anything other than a regular DreamHost mailbox.

This Friday (June 9th) we’ll be turning existing catch-alls forwarding to outside email addresses off. (We’ll notify anybody with a catch-all set up like this via email separately as well).

We’re sorry about this drastic change!