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Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

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Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#131

Post by Tepix »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #122

Kickstarter regularly sells my address, even soon after changing it. I don't think any other entity did that, which is mildly surprising.

Are you sure it's not one of the campaigns you pledged for at Kickstarter? They most likely get access to your kickstarter email address.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#132

Post by Tepix »

hamburglar wrote: post #121

After doing this for nearly 20 years I can say I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how rare it is to get spam unrelated to the company I gave my address to. What it’s been very useful for, in the other hand, is filtering email from companies that don’t honor their unsubscribe links or unchecking their “please send me marketing emails” boxes during signup. The common pattern is for them to invent a new kind of junk mail…

Yeah, this is obviously illegal but that's what quite a few companies end up doing.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#134

Post by Mountain_Skies »

andrewfong wrote: post #85

U.S. political campaigns are by far the worst offender. If you give your real email and phone number to one candidate, twenty unrelated candidates will contact you next cycle.

You don't even have to give it to a campaign. When I moved in 2020, I updated by address and phone number with the Secretary of State to transfer to a voting precinct in my new town. Unfortunately that information is available to anyone willing to spend something like $20 for a quarterly DVD. It started off as relentless SMS spam from not just campaigns, but also activists groups. Not long after, the spam for penis enlargement pills, hair loss creams, and horny women looking for a man just like me started. Then came the robocalls. None of these were a problem before I updated my address and phone number. Really wish I had only updated my address but that would simply make whoever has my old phone number a victim of that same trash.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#136

Post by Mountain_Skies »

nebula8804 wrote: post #127
green-eclipse wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This . It's relentless. Both email and SMS spam.

With SMS, you can reply with STOP and it should take you off that list. Repeat for a few campaigns and hopefully you are done for that election cycle and get less/none in the next cycle.

Where I live, the political spam appears to be crowd sourced. Rarely is the same number used more than a couple of times. Most of it is of the form "Hi, this is Robyn from the Justice Democrats. Can we rely on your vote on Tuesday for candidate so-and-so?". Asking them to stop only stops that one person from spamming. As an aside, it's interesting to see the large difference in SMS campaigning between parties. I get very little of it from Republicans but lots of it from Democrats. No idea if this is due to a certain demographic profile I match or that the two have different advertising philosophies (I get far more physical campaign mail from Republicans than from Democrats).

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#137

Post by lazyjeff »

I've been using my domain name for email for over ten years. The two surprising usernames that I got bad emails at, were turbotax@ which I used with TurboTax a long time ago, and andrewyang@ when I donated a dollar to his campaign near the start. I basically was getting borderline scam emails sent to both.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#138

Post by bee_rider »

hamburglar wrote: post #123
_s wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a few folks use my email. This is going to prove wildly unpopular but I just reset the password using the email, go in and delete the account (or submit a ticket with support to do so). They can make a new one with their own email if it’s important.

Not wildly unpopular with me. I’ve canceled multiple Netflix accounts using my $firstInitial$lastName@gmail account. My excuse if they ever challenged me would be to say I thought it was fraudulent because I didn’t set it up and I didn’t want my email to be the only contact method. Edit: there is one boost mobile customer who has done this to me and I can’t figure out the exact address they used (the thing where you…

I have had this happen to me as well. It was pretty annoying. Somebody used my name for a Twitch account. I wanted to do things the 'right way' so I didn't verify the email, didn't log in and change their password -- I contacted customer support instead (mostly just to see how it would work -- I have a very unusual name, so this is a kind of rare event for me). It took them, I think, years to delete the thing.

I've never really been 100% sure if changing the password and logging in to delete the account would violate the CFAA. I mean nobody would have gone after me for a Twitch account anyway, and I'd definitely have felt moral deleting the thing, but the letter of the law...

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#139

Post by onedognight »

lazyjeff wrote: post #137

I've been using my domain name for email for over ten years. The two surprising usernames that I got bad emails at, were turbotax@ which I used with TurboTax a long time ago, and andrewyang@ when I donated a dollar to his campaign near the start. I basically was getting borderline scam emails sent to both.

I second Intuit many years ago. And politicians. This former company wants, this year, to have full access to your bank account, history, statements and balances just to download a 1099. The latter seem to share email addresses with abandon.
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