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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?

#291

Post by kkfx »

I use many aliases, few dedicated like amzxxx @ mydomain.tld where xxx is used as a variable part of the alias, the first for me to immediately identify the address target, few catchalls like tmpalXXX used when I need to quickly drop a valid mail but have no time/will to create a proper alias on the spot, few dedicated to nl/ml stuff etc

Results so far, I just seen a spam mail from an eBay vendor, not one who I bough something from so I suppose eBay give the address, one from an Amazon Marketplace vendor from who I bough something from, few from few supermarkets that have asked for a mail for the fidelity card. I do not active monitor my SPAM folder so those are just messages who defeat my antispam, can't really tell reliable stats about all spam.

So far the overall arch works, in the sense that I do have a bunch of temporary address of "quick" usages (for instance on the go) and not much stress creating and deleting aliases but using mobile crap and very little number of services compared to the mean of people I know it's hard to say if it work or not. Surely works well for easy sorting messages (autorefile via MailDrop), and that's a good thing for me anyway.

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

#292

Post by pc86 »

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…

Someone in Australia has my name and I get an email every time he's late on some loan payment, which seems to be once every 4-5 months or so.

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

#294

Post by thread_id »

I have multiple emails for most online accounts. None of them are generating unwanted emails. There are two accounts that I have had for a long time prior to this newer practice and these are constantly receiving unwanted spam. I was able to correlate this to a project I worked on 15 years ago when one of the other contractors on the project gave me a thumb drive to install software related to the project. It blue screened my laptop - but it was too late - my laptop was hacked. Ever since then those emails have been out in the wild. I learned my lesson about good thumb drive hygiene after that.

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

#296

Post by johnklos »

There have been plenty of small companies, but the ones that have been most egregious are Adobe and Avid.

Adobe are just a bunch of idiots who have no clue what they're doing. There's a whole story, but let's just summarize by saying they have people working for them who both want to argue about how it's "not possible", yet have zero insight in to how their data is stored.

I couldn't get anyone at Avid to listen even though our company has bought millions of dollars of equipment and software from them, so I walked up to the president of the company at an event and told him. They reacted very quickly and affirmatively after that.

Right now I'm dealing with the government of the local town. I filled out a form on their web site asking something, and in the months since I've gotten emails that have the EXACT DATA that I put on the form with phishing URLs in them. I'm still waiting for the Town to explain what happened and whether the compromise was in Mailchimp, Linode or Sendgrid.

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

#297

Post by mekster »

Interestingly, ever since I've started doing that a few years ago, I don't get a single spam on the catch all domain.

The only spams I'm getting are the ones that come to the address I used on many places (mainly used for accounts that are used for paid services) in the past and still getting spammed every day.

Have services stopped selling addresses these days?

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

#298

Post by Sebb767 »

croon wrote: post #257
vfistri2 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it has gotten so bad in usa, with creep calling. Seems whenever somebody is not happy with something their immediate response is you are a creep. I find those kind of people disturbing.

You might even call it creep creep. (Sorry, couldn't resist)

> Sorry, couldn't resist

The creep creep creep ;-)

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

#299

Post by lkxijlewlf »

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…

I get email from businesses for FirstLast@gmail.com but I use First.Last@gmail.com[0] and apparently someone thinks they own that email address. I can tell you what car they drive and where they get their hair cut.

[0] dots are not significant so it's basically the same email address and it is mine, but they use it without the dots while I use it with.

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