Fix : gsuite username is a reserved word Error (postmaster, abuse email)

Recently we needed to use postmaster email address and came to knew that Google spies postmaster, abuse and some other emails of your domain. Our need to use “postmaster@thecustomizewindows.com” was for Adobe Creative Cloud. Of course, we could use some other email. Someway, “postmaster@thecustomizewindows.com” email got activated for one premium plan ( “admin@thecustomizewindows.com” was associated with another Adobe account and we wanted an easy to remember email). We knew that setup of “admin@thecustomizewindows.com as catchall email would easily address the need. But we received no email from Adobe! We should be thankful to Adobe’s excellent support to solve the issue. Basic fact is that, Google employees technically can read our emails from Adobe and actually could reset password and hack Adobe’s account (it is not bad to have a free $50/month Adobe CC account). Adobe has plenty of options to lock the account to get abused including setup of text message and 2-factor authentication. But usually the concept of catchall email, the things may get missed. Why Google can read our emails is a different question (Google always have lawyers to write legit answers) :

This problem and fixes are not new. But regularly users face this issue and find it as a new kind of trouble.

Many of the ISP feedback loops requires to demonstrate responsibility for your domain before forwarding the reports. The ISP sends an email with a link in it to the abuse@ and postmaster@ aliases of domain, and clicking the link in the emails requires to continue the feedback loop signup process. The system actually for saving from Google hacking your domain’s email. So, if you want to create abuse and postmaster users as usual method of creating email, GSuite will throw “gsuite username is a reserved word” error. The G Suite Email Audit API allows G Suite administrators to audit a user’s email, email drafts, archived chats, download a user’s mailbox. This API is only in accordance with ustomer Agreement applicable to G Suite, Education, and ISPs accounts.

Google automatically set up abuse and postmaster aliases for our domains and handles them. This is not the actual intention of admin, abuse and postmaster etc emails of a domain. Google setup the things to create invisible mailing lists. The immoral point is exactly here. If abuse, postmaster emails were forwarded to admin or some other email account then the question of silently spying would not arise. Google assigns the “Postmaster Tools” with DKIM, SPF of the domain.

The easy fix of this issue is to create the group with a name like “postmaster” and then add “admin@yourdomain” as members of the group (like we added “admin@thecustomizewindows.com”) in postmaster group. You should test from other email whether you can read “postmaster@yourdomain” email from “admin@yourdomain” inbox. Google has official documentation for it :

This fixes the basic need “how to read the emails of postmaster@yourdomain”. But sometimes we need to respond to the person/company who sends email to “postmaster@yourdomain”, such as DMCA complaints. The basic fix is quite limited. You can not change any settings of the group. Some script as anonymous user will change back your settings :

It will deliver the sense to a new user that either email hosting is legally complex or technically very difficult so that the user have to use the umbrella of GSuite. That is incorrect. Web hosts even on need avoid SSH-ing to your instance, rather they shut down the instance or restrict the network.

We believe you need to think of self-hosted email, may be transactional emails which has lesser odd issues. Although, postmaster or abuse are reserved for some specific usages, it is not practical to allow a third party (Google in this case) to read the emails.

There are some websites which heavily promote products of Google. Of course we also need to write about cloud services of companies such as IBM IoT or Rackspace cloud server. We believe from our researches that spying is a bad habit of Microsoft, Google and Facebook. We usually try to “promote” who were related with Snowden revelations.

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