I finally bit the bullet and cleaned out my email system.

For those of you who prefer the short version, here’s a quick summary:

• I don’t recommend using the catch-all email account on your domain (*@yourdomain.com).
• With today’s web hosts offering practically unlimited email accounts, there really is no reason to make it so easy for spammers to bug you.
• If you already have one, I’d love to hear how you’re coping.
• Skip down to the end and check out the resources.

I Used to Love My Catch-all Account

Back in the days of innocence, some Internet marketing experts suggested that I should set up a catch-all email account for my domains.

This account was supposed to make sure that any email intended for me didn’t bounce back to the sender as undeliverable. This would catch misspelled names, as long as the domain was entered properly.

So I dutifully created *@mydomain.com. Then, I set up my website so that visitors could click on mailto: links such as [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

Since I only owned one domain at the time, I thought this would be a nifty way to filter my business and personal email.

I also learned a useful technique: whenever I signed up for free email newsletters, I would make up a name such as [email protected]

Sorting my downloaded email was accomplished with filters.

We’ll Get it Sorted

To effectively sort incoming email, without having to create a separate rule for each email address, simply create a “generic domain” rule that filters all email from @yourdomain.com into a single folder.

Most email software process rules in the order in which they are listed. Because of this, the “generic domain” rule should be placed near the end of your list. This will give you the flexibility to create rules for specific addresses, such as orders@yourdomain.com and personal@yourdomain.com.

Are you sick of getting a particular email newsletter? If it is from a reputable publisher, you’ll be able to terminate your subscription very easily.

Afterward, you shouldn’t get any future messages addressed to that specific email address and the “generic domain” will no longer see email from that address (you don’t have to modify the rule.)

Sort the folder by recipient, select all of the messages from the unwanted address and delete them!

Why I hate My Catch-all email Address

Applebee’s and the Spam Catch-22

Everything was fine until the day I decided I wanted a free meal from Applebee’s.

All I had to was give out some personal information and agree to receive some financial information.

No big deal – I signed up as “M”, using [email protected] I used a post office box and my cell phone number.

I checked off a few “special reports”, eager to get to what I was sure had to be a coupon for lunch.

Soon, my INBOX was flooded with offers to get free prescription drugs, a 500.00 VISA gift card, cash for a down-payment for a house. Next came the grant application offers, money to pay off some bills.

I never received a coupon. If I did, it drowned in the flood of spam.

Mail.com Sucks

I have had mail.com for years. It was a good way for me to have a permanent email address, regardless of my current Internet Service Provider.

Initially, I set my morphodesigns.com domain to forward all email to mail.com. I did this so that my email client on my computer would only have to download email from one place

Although I received spam periodically, it wasn’t until the Applebee’s fiasco that I discovered the limitations of mail.com’s filtering system.

It offers unlimited blocking of specific email addresses, but not domains. this means that spammers who use forged headers can send multiple messages from the same domain and mail.com can’t seem to stop them from doing so.

It has just twelve slots for creating filter rules. I can block domains using rules, but I need way more than twelve rules!

Together, these short-comings permit more crap to be downloaded to my computer and my email client has to do more work.

Resources

Are you getting unsolicited email specifically addressed to one of your active accounts?

Log in to the appropriate website and change your email address, if possible. Contact the web master for assistance.

Mozilla Thunderbird Virtual Folders

Check my previous post for another useful tip.

Non-sequitur

When this post first appeared on WritingUp.com, I had missspelled the name of the restaurant. I decided to Google this phrase: “Applebee’s and the Spam Catch-22″.
I was shocked to learn that Appleby was a character in Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22. I promise you that I had no idea!