R4L/Services/Hosting/Email/Aliases/CatchAll

Can I still use the Catch-all Forwarding Service?

In short, no. The catch-all forwarding service, where all email sent to a domain no matter what comes before the "@" sign will get forwarded, has been replaced with unlimited free aliases. The individual forwarding accounts used to be an optional paid-for service .

Spam Prevention

The reason for this switch is to prevent spam from reaching our customer's inboxes, whether they be webmail accounts with us or mailboxes with external suppliers.

Spammer's Dirty Trick No. 183753

Spammers will find the names of newly registered databases through (illegal) access to DNS/Whois databases. They'll then guess at email addresses based on these domain names, and start blasting email to all of these guessed addresses.

If your domain is hit by this tactic, each and every guess based on your domain name will result in a spam mail reaching your inbox. By not using the catch-all and only forwarding mail for aliases that you have defined, the odds of this tactic being successful are reduced.

Spammer's Dirty Trick No. 198545

Spammers will not only guess at email addresses to send spam to, they also will use a guessed address in the spam they are sending. They will "Spoof" the address as either the From or ReplyTo address in the mass mailing. This is done to redirect bounces and complaints from their ISP connection.

The result of this kind of abuse is hundreds or thousands of bounced emails, plus multiple complaints of spam abuse being directed at your mailbox. Again, not having catch-all enabled will greatly reduce the chances of being affected by this practice.