what does Catch-All E-mail means?

[alipour66m]

hi
can you please explain what does Catch-All E-mail means in directadmin accout details?
when i check it what happend
is it usefull?

 

[smtalk]

Please check http://site-helper.com/email.html#catchall for more info

 

[scsi]

Do not use it. It is very bad.

 

[nobaloney]

To amplify on user scsi's reply a bit:

Years ago some people found catch-all email helpful because they could get email at any address at their domain without needing to set up separate forwarders.

The problem is that spammers these days often send dictionary-attack spam, sending out spam emails to every possible name in the dictionary at domains. When they hit your domain, if you've got a catch-all email address you can get thousands of spam emails.

Jeff