Sender e-mail not the one expected for e-mails with subject "Number of lockouts is increasing"

General Support
1

Hello,

I use WP Cerber latest version (9.7).

I have changed the default sender e-mail address (wordpress@fqdn) in my Wordpress website and it works also for WP Cerber e-mails with subject beginning with “WP Cerber: A new version of” but for the ones sent with the subject “WP Cerber: Number of lockouts is increasing”.

I cannot see in WP Cerber settings where to change this.

Can you, please, correct this behaviour?
I can do some tests for you if needed.

Thanks in advance

2

Hi Yorgh,

WP Cerber sends all its emails using the standard WordPress function wp_mail(), and it does not use a separate email transport for specific notifications. At least in the free version.

Since you are seeing different sender addresses for different WP Cerber emails, this suggests that the sender address is being modified outside of WP Cerber, most likely by an SMTP plugin or a WordPress filter that applies conditionally.

Please let me know what plugin or method you use to change the sender email address.

If you need full control over email sending, including SMTP configuration and consistent sender settings for all notifications, this is available in the professional version of WP Cerber.

3

Hi Nick,

Sorry for my late reply.
I could not receive the notification of your reply but I do not currently have more explanation than this.
I hope getting the NDR information received by your mail server.

Regarding my issue, I made the modification in the child theme of my website as I did for other websites.
The only difference I can see between the ones not having the same trouble and this website is that for this website, we are using Elementor plugin which might interfere…
Unfortunately, I am neither a Wordpress expert nor a Web expert…
I just wanted to be sure we will not add an SMTP Plugin only for this usage to avoid adding surface exposition of our Wordpress…
The company managing our Websites suggests us to use an SMTP plugin but if I read again your reply, it might bring other troubles.

I am a bit surprised there is no simple way from Wordpress to enforce a universal e-mail address to send e-mails whatever the plugin is using.

Thank you for your contribution

5

In your case, since the sender address is being modified at the theme level, it depends on how and when WordPress applies those filters. As you’ve already seen, this does not always result in consistent behavior across all emails.

If you need a reliable and consistent sender address for all outgoing emails, this typically requires handling email delivery at a dedicated level rather than relying on theme-level code snippets. You can achieve this either by using an SMTP plugin or by using the professional version of WP Cerber.

Also, ensure that “Load security engine” in the Main Settings is set to “Standard mode”

6

Thank you Nick for your reply.

Effectively, my Load Security Engine was still in Legacy Mode.
I set it in Standard Mode and am now waiting for new e-mails to see if it changed something.

I will keep you informed in the next days/weeks.

8

You don’t need to wait. Simply click “Click to send test” on the “Notifications” tab for the corresponding setting.