A "catch-all" address, offered by many web hosts, is an
email address that will "catch" every message sent to
your domain, regardless of who it's addressed to. For
instance, even if you just use webmaster@yoursite.com
for email, messages addressed to:
webguru@yoursite.com
master@yoursite.com
info@yoursite.com
support@yoursite.com
sales@yoursite.com
asdfghjqpde@yoursite.com
anything@yoursite.com
... etc.
... will still arrive in your mailbox. On the one hand,
this is great for customers who may inadvertantly mistype
an address. For instance, they may mean to email you at
support@yoursite.com, but type in suport@yoursite.com.
You'll still get the message.
On the other hand, you can end up getting a whole lot of
spam! Lots of spammers choose common addresses to send
out their garbage. For example, the Online Business Basics
domain used to have a catch-all address -- it would get
all the body-part-enhancement emails sent to orderdept@
... sales@ ... marketing@ ... email addresses I never
used. It got so bad that a good 95% of my messages were
of this type!
Do you "need" a catch-all address? Well, that's a business
decision you'll have to make. If you do decide to get one,
you can always use email filters and software such as
MailWasher to
help you get rid of the garbage.
