Catch all email address for potential spam - Anyone else do this?

[Adam_151]

A while ago I set up a catch all box on my own domain name, and as a result of many shops asking for email addresses at the checkouts, now give it in the format A.[shop name]@domain_name.tld. Means I can easily see if any place is cheeky enough to sell the list, and if the spam gets too much, I can send all email from that address straight to the bin!. When it all gets too cluttered, I'll ditch the A. and start on B. etc

Get a confused look sometimes when giving addresses out in this format, and quite often glazed looks when I explain that its my own domain I can have whatever I want @ it.

I just suddently thought that this forum is probably geeky anough to have others that do similar

 

[Russinating]

Done it for years, just not with the prefix bit.

 

[Scam]

That's quite a good idea actually. But don't you get more spam due to having the catchall? As in once a bot sees a domain it will try [email protected] to spam you, no? Do you see emails come in to addresses you haven't given out?

 

[dowie]

I've got a throwaway account too, I've heard of people doing what the OP does before but unless you're going to record whether you ticked the right box when signing up and then make some follow on complaint to the DPA I don't really see too much use in tracking where the spam originated from. There will probably also be some mail sent to these addresses, as scam suggested, purely at random.

 

[neoboy]

Had a throwaway account for shopping, signing up to stuff, etc for as long as I've had email.

 

[Glanza]

Done it for years, so far the only one that's ever got spam to it has been my wargaming account and that is always blocked by my exchange server for virus related stuff.

 

[adolf hamster]

Always used a throwaway account, used to be my adolfhamster hotmail but long since forgotten the password and been locked out so now i have my gmail account for signing up for random spam.

Used to use it for some shops too, so funny getting packages delivered to a.hamster

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Yup I do this. Annoyingly though when you catch them in the act they still won't bloomin' react. Asked Expedia why I was suddenly getting loads of Ticketmaster spam at the address [email protected], I don't think they understood in the slightest.

 

[sniffy]

I do something similar with my gmail account. If you prefix the username part of the address with "+" then it'll still be delivered to your inbox (e.g. [email protected]). It's a feature of the protocol so most email providers support this. However some sites won't recognise anything containing the "+" symbol as a valid address.

If I want to sign-up to a newsletter or something to receive a discount I use mailinator.com.

 

[Trifid]

Yes, I do this. It's also good at finding those companies who don't take cyber security seriously and cover up past hacks. Looking at you vision express...

 

[kaiowas]

Yeah, I give out differently prefixed addresses all the time, the other benefit is that it can make it trivial to catch the occasional genuine looking 'faked' email. ie, if I get an email telling that my apple account has been compromised that looks fairly convincing at first glance, but it's been sent to my ebay email address, then it's clearly fake and I can delete it with no more investigation required.

 

[Lakeland]

With so many email addresses how do you guys manage them all?

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Old AOL addy for spam
Gmail addy for realz

 

[Dano]

I don't get anywhere near enough spam these days for this to be worth doing, a few years ago I might have considered it but now, nope.

 

[LeeUK]

I do the catachall @mydomain and the username+emample@gmail for stuff, but I never give an email address out at at human manned checkout. If they want to sign me up to something I generally say no thanks not interested.

 

[kaiowas]

With so many email addresses how do you guys manage them all?

In my case any email sent to any user within my domain ends up in the same inbox so there's not really anything to manage.

 

[LeeUK]

In my case any email sent to any user within my domain ends up in the same inbox so there's not really anything to manage.

Labels.

 

[Akagi]

I have one.

I looked in my spam email account the other day and it has 15,000 unread.

 

[Frozennova]

I do something similar with my gmail account. If you prefix the username part of the address with "+" then it'll still be delivered to your inbox (e.g. [email protected]). It's a feature of the protocol so most email providers support this. However some sites won't recognise anything containing the "+" symbol as a valid address.

If I want to sign-up to a newsletter or something to receive a discount I use mailinator.com.

This, but on my own domain hosted on Google Apps

 

[Angilion]

I have 3 email addresses - a spamcatcher, a public address for general use and a private address for private emails. None of them contain my real name, although everyone who has my private address knows my real name. That used to be common practice, back when security and privacy were seen as being good things.

I don't use the spamcatcher any more. It doesn't seem necessary nowadays - I only get about 1 spam per day on average to my public email address. Not like the old days, when spam emails could reach high enough amounts to render an email address useless. I think ISP's filters are much better now - they seem to catch all the obvious spam. All the spam I get now is scam emails disguised as something from a legitimate source containing a plausible message and a link labelled as being to the relevant site but which actually sends you to a completely different site that I assume installs malware.