5

So I was looking through my DNS records and I found something strange. The email address I used to setup cPanel/WHM with was: william@example.com,

So I went to DNS functions -> Edit DNS zone, selected my domain and then saw something strange:

enter image description here

What is my email address doing in my DNS zone's first record, but with the @ replaced with a .?

Is this just something weird cPanel did, or something DNS does itself?

dan
  • 15,153
  • 11
  • 46
  • 52
William
  • 2,363
  • 1
  • 20
  • 32

2 Answers2

5

The email address is part of the SOA record. Its second value is the email address of the administrator.

As a minimum, the zone file must specify the Start of Authority (SOA) record with the name of the authoritative master name server for the zone and the email address of someone responsible for management of the name server. The email address in the SOA RR has the @ symbol replaced by a period.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_file#File_format

(Thanks to @dan!)

William
  • 2,363
  • 1
  • 20
  • 32
0

It's so they know who actually administers to the site. In the event someone compromises a website theres someone at least kinda accountable.

Benjamin Pinkert
  • 1