I loved the idea of having a catch all email address, I've had it for years. One reason I liked it is so that I could track how they found me, i.e. craigslist at mydomain.com, I knew they found me on craigslist. I liked it because even if someone spelled my name wrong, it would come to me. Also, I could create a campaign on the fly so I knew anything sent to campaignname at mydomainname.com would come to me. I would even sign up for and buy things with a new email i.e. nordstrom at mydomainname.com . It worked great for signing up for newsletters too i.e. brokeragentnews at mydomainname.com. Then if I started receiving even more spam directed to 'thatname' I knew exactly who sold (or 'shared') my information.
The horrendous increase in spam over the years, I chalked up to technology and a by product of the internet. I would get over a 1000 spam messages a day.
Then spammers discovered my "unsecure" domain name and they'd use it to sell viagra, or stock tips, or male enhancement products. I know because I'd get all the 'undeliverable' mails. These spammers are smart, and my catch all email account was a sitting duck. They could send out THOUSANDS of spam emails using my catch all at my domain name... I could see it came from nonsense names AT my domain. Of course it wasn't me sending the spam, but I got the undeliverables - THOUSANDS OF THEM in the spam of a couple of hours. It clogged my system, just about killed my TREO and drove me insane!
So, finally, I turned off my catch all. Now only a select few email addresses go to me, and you know what ? I got ONLY 50 spam emails today! Now is that a miracle or WHAT?
My email company allows me to create any number of aliases I want though, so if I want to create a campaign now, I just need to go online and add it.
Of course, I am curious if anyone "I care about" has an email address I created on the fly, but its ok, my website is easy to find, so they can find me there.
Next project, eliminate my email address thru-out my site and create forms only for contact, then my email can't be harvested there either.
I did just turn my domain name registry private, and perhaps that too is helping.
Its a new world out there.. and I was SICK of the spam, especially since PALM/TREO haven't seemed to come up with any spam blocking software. Unless I haven't discovered it yet...
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