Filed with Developers Update Contact Info - allow customer to use email with their own domain [Case 51861]

[sneader]

At some point, cPanel began forcing customers to use an off-site email address for their contact email address, under "Update Contact Info" in cPanel.

If the customer attempts to enter in a locally hosted email account, they are given the error:

Please use an email address that is not at this domain

However, some customers (perhaps most?) do not have multiple email addresses. Their only email may be the email address that they have hosted with us. Thus, customers are frustrated by this requirement.

The argument for forcing customers to use an off-site address is for the situation where their mailbox or disk space quota has been exhausted... they would not get the notification. However, disk quota and mailbox warnings go out at 80% (cPanel default), 90% (cPanel default), and at 98% (cPanel default). So, the customer would get 3 notifications before their disk or mailbox quota is exhausted, even if their notification email address is a local account.

Therefore, I would like to request a new "Tweak Setting" under the "Notifications" section, to give server admins the option of enforcing the off-site email requirement, or not.

Require customer to use an off-site email address for Notifications _yes (default) _no

What do you think?

- Scott

[sneader]

Also, if someone can suggest a work-around for now, that would be appreciated as well. I'm assuming these contact emails are stored in a text file somewhere, or a db, that could be manually edited?

- Scott

[cpanelkenneth]

Scott,

These addresses are stored in one of two locations:

1. The individual cpanel user file in /var/cpanel/users. This is normally the contact email defined when setting up the account.
2. The .contactemail file in ~

I think the intention was we wanted a "sure fire" way of resellers and administrators notifying their customers in the event of some kind of failure. When the failure conditions prevent the customer from accessing the server in some way then they may never receive the notification.

[sneader]

Thanks Kenneth. Hopefully cPanel will consider the tweak, to allow the server owner to decide if they'll allow a customer to use an internal contact or not, for at least one of the two contact emails. Meanwhile, I'll manually edit the ones that I'm having a problem with at the moment.

- Scott

[dxer]

I changed this via WHM. I mean, I listed this account within WHM and there changed contact address. WHM allowed me to use primary domain.

[sneader]

Thanks, that is a good idea and an easy way for the server owner to make this change. It doesn't help the end customer or solve the ultimate problem though... that the customer may not have any other email address other than their own domain. But I do appreciate this work-around tip!

- Scott

[awd]

I understand the reasons for using an external email address for notifications such as over quota.

But there are problems with forcing both primary and secondary email addressess to be external.

Many people's external email address is one @ their ISP. People change ISPs, and most people forget to update it in cPanel.

If the primary email address is outside the Domain, why can't the secondary be @ the Domain?

Or, make it such that at least one of the addresses needs to be external, not both.

[sneader]

David, are you out there? :-)

I would really like to see this feature request on the radar. It would seem fairly easy to implement. I'm here again, because I've had yet another customer that is complaining that they cannot enter in "their email address" to receive cPanel notifications. I think it is rather common for customers to not have an alternate email address... after all, we are providing the customer with email services, so why do they need yet another email address/account?

Customers should be able to enter in a locally hosted email account for their "contact address" -- feel free to warn them that they should use something else, if possible. But please don't force it. Or at least make it a Tweak Setting.

Thanks!

- Scott

[cPanelDavidG]

I have a meeting scheduled for Monday to discuss feature requests, I'll bring this up then and see what we can work out .

[cPanelDavidG]

I talked with one of our developers about this. We're thinking of going ahead with allowing those emails, but instead of displaying an invalid email error message, we'll just display a Big Scary Message™ expressing our concerns for them receiving communications about their account and how that can be compromised by using an email account hosted on that same hosting account, which they can click okay to and still proceed to use that address.

What's everyone's thoughts on this?

[sneader]

Yes, that is perfect! Since you have a space for TWO emails, maybe the Big Scary Message™ could suggest that at least one of the emails be an account that is not on the same server.

I always thought the reason for not allowing emails with the same domain as the hosting account, was due to the issue of disk space... if the user is out of disk space, how can you notify them about a disk space problem? What is the issue regarding being "compromised"?

- Scott

[cPanelDavidG]

Yes, that is perfect! Since you have a space for TWO emails, maybe the Big Scary Message™ could suggest that at least one of the emails be an account that is not on the same server.

I always thought the reason for not allowing emails with the same domain as the hosting account, was due to the issue of disk space... if the user is out of disk space, how can you notify them about a disk space problem? What is the issue regarding being "compromised"?

- Scott

You just summarized it

Basically, if the contact email is set to an account on that hosting account and they suddenly run up their disk usage (e.g. uploading a video via some web-based form) such that they wouldn't get 90% usage warnings etc, that whole process of being notified of running out of disk space no longer exists (practically speaking).

[sneader]

Ok, thanks -- I misunderstood the use of 'compromised' (I always think of hacking -- eek)

- Scott

[cPanelDavidG]

I have submitted this report to our developers. Once this gets beyond the initial planning stages and an ETA is established, this thread will be updated with that information.

[sneader]

You are my hero, Mr. G.

- Scott