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."

conditions

[TedCheshireAcad]

just be glad you're not [e-mail].

Really ,

[rd4tech]

I can't understand some people, sometimes spam makes so exciting reading...

This is what I do...

[flamechocobo]

I just write mail back. It's rather funny when you get a reply from the spammer. That isn't automated.

Re:conditions

[Liquidity]

I think [e-mail] might get even more.

Yes

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

As a geek, I run my own mail server. A "catch all" that goes to /dev/null is great.

Re:conditions

[Ryan Huddleston]

[e-mail] seems to do quite nicely :-)

Automatically sorting out SPAM

[SmoothTom]

"Most of the spam these days is ovbious spam like Subjects which make no sense and often have lots of spelling errors in the body."

Uh, sorry, but that sounds just like the legitimate e-mail I get from some of my friends... :o)

--
Tomas

Re:No brainer

[tarquin_fim_bim]

I've had more than one IT Manager specify to me that their email address is 'lower case', so I stand by my original post.

Re:So close....

[LynXmaN]

Sending back is OK.

Well if the domain that you're bouncing the message back is actually a little one and a spammer is sending like... millions of messages spoofing that domain you're collaborating to a DDoS against that mail server.

So sending back is ok, up to some point ;)

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/ [spamgourmet.com] for my disposable addresses and highly recommend it.

Re:No brainer

[pegr]

I've had more than one IT Manager specify to me that their email address is 'lower case', so I stand by my original post.

IT Management... Where the less you know, the further you go! (I guess it's because you can "relate" better with the average 1D10T...)

Re:So close....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you would think so.

My grandma was trying to email her granddaughter (my cousin) one day, and the kept saying some guy named "Damien" was harassing her...

'Course you could guess that it was an AOL email error, and "Damien" was really "Mailer Daemon", not much of a suprise, but I never really got it through her head that "Damien" wasn't some sort of magical Elf at AOL headquaters...

Sigh.

Re:No big problems here

[Jesus_666]

Kill'em all, let God decide.

Good idea. If we kill each and every human on the planet we have a 100% chance of stopping all spammers. Who cares about a few false positives?

Re:No brainer

[TastyWords]

Perhaps you are referring to the riddle:

Q: What do you call someone who finishes at the bottm of his class in medical school?
A: Doctor.

For those unfamiliar with some of the eponymous terms, the Peter Principle says, "Everyone rises at least one level above their competitive skill level." IOW, whereever you end up, you should have been at least one level below that. (and the evidence tends to support this.
The simplest example? I could ROT 13 an answer in a couple of sentences for you to guess but it should be obvious: PHBs. They have to come from some place(!)If you've been around one in particular and watched them achieve the lofty position, them since they were in position(s) before that. Somewhere along the line they were in a position which matched some part of their skill set. Then someone saw how efficient they were in that job and jacked them upward, and *poof*, PHB Level 1.0.

They reach a point where they can't go up, won't go down[1], even at another facility, and aren't capable enough to move laterally, current company or elsewhere.

As a professor of mine pointed out about twenty-five years ago, they're at the apex of their profession (their own skill-levelwise), waiting for the next 10-20-30-40 years to pass by so they can retire. Mostly because they've clogged the ladder and frequently taken training in a field which "had a job waiting for them when they finished". That is one f%cking sickening thought for the tech industry: "The requirement in the USA will be 600k each year for the next ten years...blah, blah, blah". Lots of positions for people to take classes and get a B.S. because that field is like a siren song...God, what a scary thought. It's bad enough now.

[1] Okay, I played a straight line there...I figured if I didn't say something most people wouldn't have caught it.

Re:a benefit of catch-all addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

I did this, but after a while it became irritating trying to keep track of all the addresses I gave out.
I decided it's best not to have a "catch-all" address and to add specific addresses to my e-mail redirect file -- that way I get very little spam and if any comes from one of those addresses I can easily delete it.
By the way, I once got a "cease and desist" email from some dumb company that told me that "using their company's trademarked name as my e-mail address violates their terms of use" and that "I must change my e-mail address or legal action will be taken." -- Fucking Morons! So, every domain on the entire internet with a catch-all address is in violation of their terms of use and potentially faces legal action from them. Unbelievable!

Re:No big problems here

[RobertB-DC]

Postmaster and Abuse are required mailboxes. They are not optional. RFC 2142 mandates their use. This isn't some new requirement either. That RFC was written in 1997.

In other news, .com is the approved TLD for commercial entities. .net is reserved for organizations that provide connectivity services essential to the operation of the Internet, and .org domains must only be assigned to not-for-profit organizations. Enforcement of these rules is essential to the smooth running of the Internet, and violators will certainly be blacklisted within an inch of their lives.

Yep, it's great living in 1997.

(Sorry if it seems I'm piling flames on a fire that's already burning just fine... it's just that your post contained such tempting kindling!)