Email Catch All and Spam

The days of using a "Catch ALL" Email, are all but over.

The practice of using one of the company email boxes for a "Catch ALL" means that the company might be opening themselves up to major search engines Spam attacks, Phishing, and Pharming Attacks.

Years ago and still goes on today the practice that if someone sends an email to the wrong addressed location the mail would still get through via the general mail box even if someone accidentally mistyped the address. Or, when an employee was no longer employed with a company it would still get delivered to another account no matter what. There may even have been practical marketing applications for this practice. Sometimes companies would have special promotions and/or current activities and having a new name to represent this for email without having to go into the control panel to create a new account was easy.

Today, this practice opens up a means for spammers to find a mail server that has this type of drop box and literally create any name they want as a return address with your company domain name as the sender. By doing this, spammers can load up an email with Windows viruses and get a double whammy. They can send out unsolicited emails to the world wide web and anyone receiving it if the receiver clicks on the return address as a reply they will think that everything is OK because it looks like a reputable company and the email did not get kicked back.

So, today if you want to create special names for mail, spend the little bit of extra time and set up a dedicated box or forward ONLY the special name without having an open drop box. If you don't you may CATCH ALL more than you want.

Internet Marketing Ethics