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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?

#281

Post by neya »

I buy a lot of stuff from AliExpress, eBay and Alibaba, it goes without saying you should use a separate email address for those. My email was not only sold, I started getting malware themed links shared to me as Google Drive files. The moment you click on it (and I did from another test env.) - it straight up runs some clever JS and then downloads a DMG or EXE file which is clearly spyware (multiple flags from AV providers) in the exact name of the Google document.

I have also received pornographic images with embedded code which somehow seems to run JS code when you open them. In short, they try to con you once they know you're a frequent buyer. Oh, and they also WhatsApp me directly with lot of links to porno-like malware or actual malware directly from new numbers every week. I had to stop using my WhatsApp after all this happened.

But, it is what it is and I have learned to move on.

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

#282

Post by alibrarydweller »

alt227 wrote: post #249

Some loosly related questions: What are people using to manage their individual address-per-service aliases? Is there a good provider which does this well and lets you manage the mail to each alias without logging out and in to each account? I could see how self hosting with something like mail-in-a-box could do this, but requires a ton of knowledge and maintenance. It would be easy to just set up multiple gmail acco…

Fastmail lets you send email from @yourdomain.com.

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

#283

Post by ethbr0 »

nulbyte wrote: post #265
dmje wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite gratifying to read that I'm not alone in this. I was really early into Gmail so have first.last@ and get a lot of stuff emailed to me that is exactly as you describe - not spam, just mistaken address. Hotel reservations, golf clubs, Republican party bullshit, hilarious copies of order receipts from gun shops... (The last one of the above I replied to - it was an order for a rifle scope. I sent what I thought wa…

I have the same with Gmail. I get lots of email for firstlast@ because someone can't be bothered to remember the numbers after their username. Then I have also gotten coffee receipts for a cardiologist (he likes Major Dickason's blend), wedding invitations, boating newsletters, and even modeling opportunities in a different country. It amazes me how many people either don't know their email address or can't imagine s…

I received a background check result from a job application for a Florida sheriff's office.

At least it listed "my" address. :)

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

#284

Post by ethbr0 »

jon-wood wrote: post #255
nicolas_t wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar experience, I received emails from his families with children photos, emails from his certification, notices about his internship, etc.. I sent a few emails to his family explaining this, they told me that I was wrong. I gave up and just ignore all of those emails. It's on gmail and I don't use gmail for important things anyway...

> they told me that I was wrong What a bizarre response... somebody who isn't the person you intended to email has replied to you from the address you sent the message to. What could possibly make someone think that the person replying is the one who was wrong?

Someone who doesn't want to make the effort to correct things?

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

#285

Post by bshep »

I use spamgourmet, these are my most spammed emails:

  id            emails  creation    notes
  =======================================
  freepsp       37177   2005-09-23
  mtgox         21229   2011-06-19
  scriptaculous 10408   2006-03-27
  winex         5103    2007-05-01
  patriciafield 4293    2007-03-09 
  rms           3472    2007-03-10  www.rmsexperts.com
  wallstsense   3310    2009-04-01      
  panda         3300    2004-11-02  panda antivirus
Edited for formatting

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

#286

Post by Macha »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #197
maxk42 wrote: post #12

I used to. Stopped doing it as it was too much hassle to keep track of, but the biggest spammers were tech recruiters. I think some of them post fake jobs just so they can harvest your email address when you apply. Then that email address gets passed around on various lists for years.

Hasn't LinkedIn pretty much replaced this? I get recruiters on LinkedIn all the time, but very few if any on my personal email.

Allow me to introduce you to the world of recruiter email lookup services:

- https://recruitin.net/

- https://www.gitrecruit.co/

- https://amazinghiring.com/amazinghiring-chrome-extension/

Recruiters feel that email/phone have better response rates, so many of them try to bypass linkedin by looking up your details in such a service. The third of these in particular found my details from the gravatar leak, as best as I can tell, so I wouldn't expect high ethics from these companies.

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

#288

Post by garbagetime »

lbotos wrote: post #267
richrichardsson wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got sent a ton of (quite private) PII from T-Mobile in Holland for some poor schmuck who can't understand that his email address is not a.byss@gmail.com, or alternatively isn't actually putting an email address and some other idiot is deciding, "This guy is called Adrian Byss, his email is probably a.byss@gmail.com". I've had the email abyss@gmail.com* since not long after gmail became available to the public. If I…

good theory, but dots don't matter in gmail addresses: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en

I don't think that contradicts your parent comment's theory

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

#289

Post by kasey_junk »

narag wrote: post #23

I mostly use one single address, but I can tell you exactly where all the spam comes from: idiots whose name is the same as mine. They give my address as if it belonged to them. Probably they created addresses like narag33@server and they believe that it's narag@server instead. So not only I receive all the spam from dubious sites that they suscribed to, but also their legitimate mail from lists and friends. My names…

My idiot namesake signed up for his unemployment benefits with my email address. The unemployment agency in his state won’t let me change it or contact the person by mail to have them fix it.

He also is down for _any_ sweepstakes and has dubious dating preferences. He’s out there wondering why he never wins anything and no one swipes on his profile.

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

#290

Post by Macha »

zaphoyd wrote: post #269
alt227 wrote: post #249

Some loosly related questions: What are people using to manage their individual address-per-service aliases? Is there a good provider which does this well and lets you manage the mail to each alias without logging out and in to each account? I could see how self hosting with something like mail-in-a-box could do this, but requires a ton of knowledge and maintenance. It would be easy to just set up multiple gmail acco…

The key to doing this is an email provider that will let you do a catch all account. Every email that doesn’t match a known mailbox gets delivered to the catch all mailbox. This allows you to “create” new addresses with zero overhead by just typing in whatever you want when you are signing up for something (or speaking a brand new email out loud to a retail store employee or whatever). Later on if you want to organiz…

I mean, consumer email providers don't allow this, but it's pretty table stakes from bring your own domain providers (Google Apps, Fastmail, Microsoft).
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