Using a Catchall to Avoid and Filter Spam

I only have one e-mail account. That's right, one. In this day and age where it seems like everyone and his grandmother are webmasters, it's a little surprising for someone who runs websites to only have one mail account, isn't it Truth to tell, I've had this same e-mail mailbox for the last several years, and in that time I've signed up for thousands of web services and countless one-off website accounts created just to be able to see an article or download a file, used once and then forgotten.

And for all of them, I have seen the introductory e-mail appear in my primary mail account, as well as the confirmation that my e-mail address is valid and won't you click this link to confirm that for us thank you very much. Yet I don't have a spam problem. Why Because I host my own e-mail along with my own domains, and I use a catchall.

What is a catchall and how does it work Simply put, a catchall is a configuration setting for a mailbox that defines it as the default receiving mailbox for one or more domains. You have a domain yourdomain.com, and mail comes there. Normally, if they e-mail joe@yourdomain.com and no such account exists, the mail is rejected. A catchall was invented as a lead-capturing marketing technique, so that you could respond to people (potential customers) even if they misspell the e-mail address of the sales guy at your company, or if they just generically e-mail "sales@yourdomain.com" or "support@yourdomain.com" which may or may not exist.

There is another sneaky use for a catchall, though. By setting up a catchall for the domain I use for receiving e-mail, I can dynamically on-the-fly create spontaneous e-mail addresses whenever I choose, in whatever amount I choose, and without having to configure anything beforehand. Since all mail address to *anyone*@mydomain.com shows up in my mailbox (which is configured as the catchall mailbox), whenever I'm at a website that wants my e-mail address for me to use their services or to download a PDF or whatever I'm doing that day, I can make up whatever e-mail address at my domain that I want.

Say I'm trying to read an article at the NYTimes (which requires registration), or say I'm trying to buy something at a computer hardware website that I'll probably never visit again. I have to give them an e-mail address to create an account, right So if the website I'm buying from is CheapoComputers.com, I will sign up with the e-mail address "cheapocomputers.com@mydomain.com". Since my mailbox is set up to be the catchall for my domain, I will get all the e-mails that I should.

However, since I don't know CheapoComputers from anyone else (or any of the other million places that want my e-mail address every day), if they should happen to sell my info to another firm, or use it themselves to send out unsolicited advertisements or spam, as soon as the e-mail comes in I know who the guilty party is because the e-mail address it is sent to says where that account was first created and for what purpose!

I can then, at my leisure, either contact the company that sent the spam and confront them about where they got my e-mail address and that they had better not send me spam, or if I don't want to bother with it I can just block that TO address in my e-mail settings. It will shut off that one method of reaching me that is now being spammed, but anything else continues to reach me just fine!