After the dotcom bust, it was sometimes the user information which was the only thing left to sell off (even when they promised not to.) Spam was more of a prob

After the dotcom bust, it was sometimes the user information which was the only thing left to sell off (even when they promised not to.) Spam was more of a problem back then, or maybe just being able to avoid it was more of a problem. So catch all email like this was actually beneficial but it became obvious only a few years later, to me at least, that no one was selling email addresses anymore and all that management was unnecessary overhead. I'd say about by 2006 it had definitely sorted itself out. I now route mail by context and only deal with maybe a half dozen accounts regularly.