Is A Catch-All Address Worth The Spam?

wildzeke writes "I plan on switching Internet providers this summer to get a faster speed. Since losing an email account is the biggest pain when switching providers, I decided to pay the extra money to have email for the domain I registered. One of the options provided is to make one of your email accounts a catch-all account. In other words, any email sent to this domain with out a valid user name, will be dumped in the catch-all account. The question I have, is this a good idea or not? On one hand, it may catch important email such as admin, or postmaster or simply mis-typed user name. On the other hand, the catch-all will open the flood gates to spam who will send to [all user names in the world]@domain.com."

Comments

Re:Been there, done that

[lewko]

The only thing I really had to do was notify my friends, who are long used to typing whatever they want into the username section of the domain, tailored to whatever it is they want (eg boywhowillfixmycomputer@, bikemechanicmanwhowillalsofixmycomputer@ etc).

The worst thing is when your so-called friends figure out for themselves that you have a catchall set up, so you start receiving emails to pigfucker@yourdomain, grabass@yourdomain etc... and it's not even spam, it's from your friends!

I now use the free http://www.spamgourmet.com/ for my disposable addresses and highly recommend it.