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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?

#61

Post by gernb »

Honestly, not very many. I've signed up for 300+ companies, maybe more, everyone with a different email. Many of them signed me up to their mailing lists that I didn't ask for and didn't want but they usually made it one click to unsubscribe.

One that sticks out is Kohl. I never signed up for them and they spammed the shit out of me 15 years ago. I've never shopped there and from the spam I never will.

Otherwise, a conference running company in Japan spams me and they use a new email address on their end for every new conference.

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

#62

Post by dylan604 »

mynegation wrote: post #39

Ah, finally, my time to shine. Amazingly - not too many, given that I use hundreds of unique emails. Tbh this confuses the hell out of people when I give a CSR at AcmeBoutique the address AcmeBoutique@myowndomain.com The offenders that I remember: - Men’s Health magazine - local gym - online flower shop - agency that at the time handled visa applications for a local Indian consulate - couple of infoproducts from Prod…

A small biz owner that I used to contract with was having a disagreement with American Airlines over the phone because when he was asked to provide his email, he gave an obviously adversarial email taking advantage of his catch-all. I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but it was obvious they did not believe that the email was legit. I don't remember the exact address provided, but something along the lines of 'americanairlinesisajoke@domain.com'. The conversation went on for over 10 minutes just over the legitimacy of the email address nevermind the actual issue the necessitated an actual phone call in the first place.

He's the type that also will string along the spam callers until they hang up on him, so he enjoys these conversations.

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

#63

Post by jt2190 »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #46
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…

Any time I can I login to their accounts and update the email to null@void.com .

You’re probably joking, but in case you aren’t, don’t put in an address for a registered domain like void.com, as you’ll just be redirecting the spam to them.

Instead use the reserved domain example.com.

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

#64

Post by Brajeshwar »

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…

LOL. So, my name is a pretty standard Indian name and many a lot do not confirm their email addresses (Banks, Insurances, etc). India's default email provider is, of course, GMAIL (even government officials use it). I was one of the early distributor of Gmail invites (I invited a lot) and I own brajeshwar@gmail.com

Now, I get Bank Statements, Credit Card, Health, Insurance and whatnot for over 5+ "Brajeshwar"s in India. I just ignore them as I use my GMAIL ID just for newsletter subscriptions and ramnants of the old Internet but I do check once a week during my weekly digital chores.

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

#65

Post by dylan604 »

rsync wrote: post #40
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.

"I used to. Stopped doing it as it was too much hassle to keep track of ..." Can you describe what it is you need to keep track of ? I imagine giving out servicename@domain.com and if you get spam on that pseudonym you just block it in procmail or smtpd.conf or (whatever you do in gmail). Right ?

I always laugh to myself about the "too much hassle" lines. My password manager has 0 issues managing the unique usernames and strong passwords for each account, therefore, it is not a hassle for me. If they want to be a glutton for punishment and an easy target for being pwnd, then so be it.

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

#66

Post by selcuka »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #41
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…

Same here. I thought I was lucky when I snagged one of the first GMail invites and was able to pick a 5-letter user name. Oops: https://i.imgur.com/Y5c1iIt.png

I thought Gmail didn't allow usernames shorter than 6 characters.

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

#67

Post by zdragnar »

ascar wrote: post #47
neogodless wrote: post #22

The list is long and I'm on my phone. Several were from breaches like Adobe.com and Park mobile. MyFitnessPal. Cadillac (used email for a free brochure). I think the real worst offender is LinkedIn. I put one email on my resume and a different one for logging in to LinkedIn that should not be public. And yet I get direct recruiter spam there all the time.

Linkedin in forwards a recruiter messages to your email. Are you really getting emails without a message in your linkedin inbox? I get quite some recruiter spam, but always via a LinkedIn message.

Not the person you responded to, but I've had the same problem. Recruiters will email me directly with shallow compliments on my LinkedIn profile.

It might not be directly through LinkedIn- about once a year, random recruiters will call my personal cell phone, even though I have no how they possibly got it. By now it's on a list that gets sold, I'm sure, but where it started, I'm clueless.

The most infuriating are recruiters who cold-email me at my work email. There's something about contacting me via my official capacity as an employee to take a different job that really gets under my skin. Might just be that I am very, very much not a "bring your whole self to work" kind of guy and more of a "keep a hard divide between my work and personal life" one.

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

#68

Post by CamperBob2 »

selcuka wrote: post #66
CamperBob2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I thought I was lucky when I snagged one of the first GMail invites and was able to pick a 5-letter user name. Oops: https://i.imgur.com/Y5c1iIt.png

I thought Gmail didn't allow usernames shorter than 6 characters.

Ah, you're right, it's 6 (first initial + 5 character last name.) I can't count...

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

#69

Post by Imagenuity »

I use different email addresses for everyone, and have a catchall on my domain. Been using this setup since the late 90's.

My spam comes from a few sources:

- data breaches that leaked an email address (Adobe, Dropbox, LinkedIn, GoDaddy etc)

- family that used to forward all kinds of crap using the TO: field instead of BCC:

- some companies sold my email which then started to propagate more and more

- some just figured it out. If you own a domain firstlast.com you'll get spammed at first@firstlast.com

- dns records

There are more I'm sure. These are the sources I'm certain of.

Your email is only as secure as the weakest link that has that address.

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

#70

Post by Brajeshwar »

I'm not very pedantic about it but I do create a few ones. I don't do catchall as my domain has been on the Internet for a very long time and the catchall usually gets pretty badly spammed (I tried).

For instance;

- I have something like NetflixJio2021@familydomain.com, which is the free Netflix account that I got from my Jio Fiber connection. I gave that to the In-laws.

- IndiaPassport2022@familydomain.com because Indian Passport Office won't allow more than 5 Passport (I think 5 was max, last time I checked) applications from an account. I'm usually the person dealing with the Internet and digital stuffs for our family, and most of the relatives. The limit gets hit pretty easily.

I used to sign up for almost every Startups that pops up from friends, acquaintances, and people whom I had even interacted once in the hope that I'm helping them with one more account. Unfortunately, especially Startups in India, will bombard and spam relentlessly (emails and phones) that I have totally stopped signing up for anything. I either use a throwaway or the "+" method when I really have to -- brajeshwar+StartupName@gmail.com

A few years ago, I started logging the ones that specifically spammed my phone number. I visited a Startup and agreed to give them my number for the visitor log entry. I trusted them because I helped them with their product during the MVP to pitch Investors. They started spamming me after I left and before I reached home.

I stopped the logging and now I have declared SMS/Text Bankruptcy. https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1jI0DxmZ586cBmyu1...

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