I use unique addresses for almost everyone, and the spam fits a consistent pattern. Mostly, the emails don’t get sold unless I order from a somewhat shady site (grey market items not regionally available for example). Most of the time when I get spam from a ‘legitimste’ source, it’s right after a news announcement about a data leak. For example, my PayPal address gets a bunch of spam, and that happened after some user leak many years ago.
Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
441–444 of 444 posts
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#442I 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…
Somebody signed up for a dating service with my email address. The website allowed me to log in without entering or resetting the password. So, naturally, I changed their gender preferences.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#443Life pro tip: xyz@gmail.com and xyz+abc@gmail.com are equivalent in the eyes of the mail server
All the emails to xyz+abc will be routed to xyz@gmail.com. This is because the server ignores everything after the +
I use the + to identify the website I provided my email to so if I was registering for facebook my email would be xyz+facebook@gmail.com
So far I’ve received the most spam from 2 companies an Indian startup called dunzo(5-10spam a day) and adobe
Ive tried to get my data deleted from their site but I guess it’s too late now
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#444I 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 had similar problems, which I posed earlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29749715