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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?

#381

Post by InitialLastName »

noasaservice wrote: post #327
kasey_junk wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then "forget password" and take the account over.

Even if you're getting misdirected emails, it's probably a bad idea to toe the line into "defrauding a state government" by taking over someone's unemployment login.

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

#382

Post by lostcolony »

gwbas1c wrote: post #342
gwbas1c wrote: post #331

The absolute worst offender are political activists: (In the US) I attended my town's meeting for a political party in 2016. I put my name and email on the list with an email address that I made up on the spot. It continues to get HAMMERED by every up-and-coming politician in the state who's trying to make a name for themselves. A few years ago I attended Senator Ed Markey's roadshow for the Green New Deal. I again u…

Funny story that I should add: In 2003 someone tried to get me to join Quickstar, a new initiative from Amway. (It's now been merged into Amway.) I gave them "quickstar@..." A few months later I got a cease-and-desist to the email address, and the moron who tried to get me involved called me up and started threatening me. I had to explain to their lawyer what a catch-all is. Fortunately, he was a very reasonable pers…

Never had a lawsuit, but yeah, it's interesting to see who it trips up. I'm pretty sure I lost out on a job opportunity with a high profile company because the email I used was (company)@(my domain), and I got asked by an insurance agent to confirm I wasn't an employee of their company when I had (their company)@(my domain), which he indicated was because of the email address. Go figure.

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

#383

Post by tristor »

InCityDreams wrote: post #375
tristor wrote: post #365

The absolute worst offenders are political campaigns, PACs, parties, and candidates. I believe because they're exempted from robocall and spam legislation so feel they have carte blanche. I've donated to local candidates from several different parties, and subsequently my addresses ended up in lists with national organizations and their associated PACs. I get what I would call "extremist" content endorsed and sent by…

So, you offered to man the phones, get spimd and spamd and you don't know anyone enough to mention "hey, we're pissing a lot of people off, here"?

Yes. I'm not sure if you understand how the volunteering works, but basically you show up at a particular location one day, another volunteer that's more tied to that location runs things, you sign-in and they set you up with about 10 minutes of training, and then you do your thing for an hour or two, and then you sign-out and leave. Most volunteers do maybe 1-2 hours of volunteering in a given campaign year, and may never volunteer again.

So, effectively I don't "know" anyone with any authority just because I volunteered to man the phones. I'm not on the candidate's guest list for their summer house parties.

As part of my local activism, I've volunteered several times for different forms of political action, and through that I have never once developed a personal relationship with anyone in leadership of these organizations.

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

#384

Post by Tepix »

cdoctorow wrote: post #302
Tepix wrote: post #128

There are a bunch like AliExpress, eBay, Paypal and kickstarter where 3rd parties get your email address too (or used to), so you don't know which one leaked them. I tend to change the email address every few years when it gets too much and block the old ones after a while. I suspect that most of the entries on the list got hacked. There are a few exceptions where companies do not honor unsubscribe requests and keep…

I find that bizarre. It's just a mailman instance. Did the bot send you a confirmation email? Did you try emailing me instead? A few times over the 15-ish years that I ran the list, Mailman has failed to honor unsub requests, and in each case, it turned out to be because the user signed up with a different send-to than their return-to - for example, if you signed up as doctorow-list+youremail@gmail.com, and then send…

Yeah i did email you, it was a long time ago (10 years?). I got a typical spam email to my "x-craphound" alias. I guess you got hacked twice back then.

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

#385

Post by blamazon »

coding123 wrote: post #377
doyouevensunbro wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Ends up making me regret donating at all, which someone has to realize would be the end result, right?

Same here. I put my email down when I was a democrat. I still get emails from them after unsubscribing many, many times. The problem with unsubscribing is that distributing your email address isn't illegal, so they put you on a new list with a different name and - you didn't exactly unsubscribe from THAT list did you!

I actually had good success calling the office of the spammer in question and complaining to the person answering the phone. A young staffer with political ideals tends to pick up the phone and they empathize. They take my email address and seem to do something with it. I did this maybe 4 times over a span of a year and the chain reaction stopped.

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

#386

Post by Twirrim »

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've an Aussie namesake who has used my gmail address a few times on sites. I never use my gmail on anything. My spam folder for it is dominated by Australian targetted spam, to a degree I find mildly fascinating.

Recently, google/gmail decided to be too helpful. The namesake used my email address when they booked a stay at a hotel (helpfully the hotel made it impossible for me to unsubscribe!) The hotel has sent me a few emails related to the booking, reminders and the like. Google being Google, sees the email, and creates a calendar entry for me. I delete it. The next email comes in, and boom, there's the calendar entry again.

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

#389

Post by wink »

bvm wrote: post #185
wink wrote: post #172

195 x+kickstarter@xxx 57148 x+newrelic@xxx The rest doesn't even register.

wow. is that New Relic monitoring alerts or is that...spam?!

I have not used New Relic in years, if there were real alerts it would have been for a few personal hosts, so let's subtract 5k to be generous - I've been getting spam to this address for years.

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

#390

Post by theriddlr »

dmje wrote: post #216
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…

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 first{initial} so I get emails for everyone whose initial is the same as mine
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