Public email signup

[JDoe]

Email accounts created under the control panel can be accessed by the account owner. I would like people to create their own email accounts that I, as the account owner, cannot access. I am using a shared hosting plan, by the way.

If I install a webmail client such as RoundCube or SquirrelMail together with a public signup feature, would this create private email accounts that I cannot access, or is this not possible on my hosting plan?

I've searched the net but I haven't been able to find anything.

[Karl]

Correct, that is not possible. That would open up a "free email" service, which is just asking for abuse for spam and other illegal activities.

[JDoe]

Is that technically not possible on a shared server or per the TOS? If the latter: what if the user-created account would be placed on hold until the admin grants the account? That would prevent any abuse.

All I'm really interested in is for email accounts to be private to the admin. Is there any way to do that on a shared server?

Would a "free email" service be possible on a VPS or dedicated server?

[Kevin]

Is that technically not possible on a shared server or per the TOS? If the latter: what if the user-created account would be placed on hold until the admin grants the account? That would prevent any abuse.

All I'm really interested in is for email accounts to be private to the admin. Is there any way to do that on a shared server?

Would a "free email" service be possible on a VPS or dedicated server?

We don't have the technical means to do it with our existing control panel, but it's also not really something we want to do. Once you create the accounts with the admin user, they can change their password, use webmail, etc from http://mail.yourdomain.com

You could certainly run a free email service via a VPS or dedicated server, but we would strongly caution you to avoid such a thing as it's a haven for spammers and your server would likely get blacklisted and abused constantly. If you caused other customers to suffer from collateral damage, we might be forced to suspend it.

[JDoe]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for your answer. I don't really want to run a free email service like GMail. Having users sign up themselves would be nice, but it's not necessary. I asked about having private email accounts because I want to offer email addresses to family and friends. As a matter of principle, though, I don't want to be able to access the account myself after its creation.

You wrote that users can change their password. That's true, but the admin can still access their mail accounts via the control panel (mail manager>click to launch email account). The admin doesn't have to enter a password and is taken directly to the mail account. Additionally, the admin can change their password via the control panel without knowing password.

So, do I understand that there is no way to offer a private email account that the admin cannot access? That would be very disappointing.

[Kevin]

The admin is the owner of the account, so it makes sense for him to be able to access the account for testing and configuration. He would of course also be able to delete the mailbox or change the password or add redirects to copy mail into another mailbox for him to read. There's no real way to prevent this in any shared hosting system.