On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 08:15:13AM +0000, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
Helping a friend change computers, we found that the email login did not work, and after a series of conversations with the provider were told to log in to get messages using
*@mydomain.com
This did indeed work, and the effect appears to be that mail sent to any name at mydomain.com is picked up by the login, and also that any name used results in mail being accepted. So for instance you can apparently send to
alexander@mydomain.com bacchus@mydomain.com calypso@mydomain.com
and so on, and it will all arrive when you log in for messages as *@mydomain.com.
Why would anyone set up an email system like this? Does it not make a lot more sense to have specific email addresses, both to reduce spam, and to allow you to segregate, for instance, home and business email?
It used to be the default setup on some (many?) commercial hosting sites. It was the 'normal' way to set things up on my account at Gradwell dot Net when I first started there. I think the intent was that a 'catchall' mailbox would see any mis-addressed E-Mail and the user wouldn't then lose what *might* be an important enquiry.
The recommended setup at Gradwell doesn't do this now though it's still perfectly possible to do it if you want.
This is the same case where there was the incomprehensible networking with two cards and class B addresses for a three machine network. When set up in the usual way with a five port router modem, it all worked perfectly fine with a lot fewer cables. Very strange.
I regularly find that when I tidy up the spider's web of cables under my desk I end up with a couple of spare ones and everything working still. :-)